


A Voice in the Wilderness

by Selkit



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Amnesia, Dragon Age Big Bang, F/M, Identity, Implied/Referenced Torture, Loss of Identity, Lost Love, Memory Loss, Non-Graphic Violence, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 12:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/573377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selkit/pseuds/Selkit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After disappearing in the Deep Roads while searching for her sister, Velanna wakes up on a slave caravan headed into Tevinter, with no memory of who she is or how she got there. As she struggles to survive in a brutal and unfamiliar world with nothing but her magic, her nightmares, and brief flashes of her old life, she finds herself torn between forging a new identity or trying to remember who she used to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2012 Dragon Age Big Bang. A big thank you to servantofclio for providing suggestions and encouragement. Many many thanks and kudos to thunz for his podfic of this story (sorry for your sore throat!), and lafemmedarla for her fanmix!

_Years later, while on an expedition in the Deep Roads, Velanna took off on her own after saying she had seen Seranni in the shadows. The other Wardens searched for her, but she was truly gone._

_—Dragon Age: Awakening epilogue_

* * *

She woke to pounding in her head and the taste of blood in her mouth. 

For a moment she remained motionless, waiting to open her eyes until the world stopped swaying beneath her. But the lurching carried on, and she frowned, splaying unsteady fingers against the ground and forcing her eyelids up.

The burst of sunlight sent pain lancing through her skull, and she couldn’t suppress a sharp hiss through clenched teeth. She threw a hand up to shield her eyes, and the sudden movement drew a hazy blackness around her, clouding her vision and blocking out the sun’s rays. 

She froze, grimacing as she waited for the world to clear again. Her hand shifted upward, fingers pausing as they brushed against the bandage wrapped around her forehead. The fabric was stiff and crusted, and her fingers came away with dried red flecks clinging to her skin.

_What happened—?_

The question had barely formed in her mind before hard fingers closed around her shoulder and jaw, chasing away the haze. She clawed at the attacker, attempting to yell, but her voice somehow came out as nothing but a splutter. 

A strange, guttural sound filled the space around her. It took a moment for her to recognize it as laughter. 

“Aren’t you a lucky one,” the voice said, thick with an accent she couldn’t place. “Another day or two unconscious and we would’ve left you to the vultures.”

She blinked, squinting at the speaker: a human man, short but powerfully built, with sagging jowls and too-shrewd eyes. The ground heaved again, and she looked sharply around her, taking in the road stretching ahead and the train of wagons following behind. It was difficult to make them out through the clouds of dust kicked up under the wheels.

“Where—” she tried, but it came out as a croak.

“Here, this’ll help.” The man rose, balancing on the jolting wagon with practiced ease. He pulled out a flask, dangling it in front of her. “A reward for finally waking up.”

The water was tepid and flat, but she drank it greedily, droplets dribbling down her chin and over her fingers. The pounding in her head eased just a little, and her throat felt less raw with each breath. She didn’t want to surrender the flask, but the man wrested it from her with ease. 

“That’s enough of that,” he chided. “Now. What’s your name, girl?”

She stared at him.

“Not an optional question.” His voice took on an edge. “Out with it. I know you’re not a mute.”

She reached for the word, but her search came up empty, a fist grasping at the wind.

“I don’t know,” she said. Her voice sounded thick and unfamiliar to her ears, even as it rose with slowly growing dread.

His bark of laughter made her jump, hackles rising. “Must have gotten lost when you took that bump on your head, eh? Ah well, makes no difference where you’re going.” 

“Which is where?” A sharp jolt of fear overwhelmed her like a sudden flood, canceling out the pain and fog still clouding her brain. “What happened to me? Where am I? How did I get here?”

“And the tongue comes loose!” The man cackled again, jowls jiggling with mirth. He heaved himself up, striding to the wagon’s edge and pointing off into the distance. “If ya squint, you can just make it out.”

She got to her feet gingerly, shaky legs protesting, and stumbled to the wall. Her stomach rolled along with the wagon, her fingertips turning white with their grip on the edge.

On the horizon, she could make out the silhouette of a sprawling city, with enormous stone towers stretching skyward as though trying to pierce the clouds. Countless smaller buildings clustered around them, reminding her of children clutching at their mothers’ skirts. 

“Minrathous,” the man said, eyes sharpening on her with a gaze that was a little too keen. “Ring a bell at all?”

The throbbing in her head intensified, and the wagon’s rough wooden edge grated against her palms. “Of course not,” she snapped. “I can’t even remember my own _name_.”

His laughter was quieter this time, yet somehow it sent a strange prickling feeling up her spine. She dug her nails into the wood, resisting the urge to reach up and rub the back of her neck. 

“Well, I won’t spoil the surprise,” he drawled, low enough that she had to lean in to hear. “All I’ll say is that you’re going to love it there, girl.”

* * *

The little boy in the far corner of the pen wouldn’t stop screaming.

His mother gathered him up in her arms, rocking him, clutching him to her chest and murmuring into his hair. The whispers brought little comfort to either of them—the mother was crying almost as hard as her child, choked sobs scratching against a parched throat. 

Across from them, the elf that still couldn’t remember her name brought shaking hands up to clutch at her ears, not sure whether to join the others in their cacophony or scream at them to shut up. She settled for turning her back to them, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, ragged nails digging in hard enough to leave red marks on her skin. 

The pen was erected near the edge of the marketplace, shadowed by one of the massive stone towers, but the shade provided little relief from the smothering heat that blanketed the city. A few bored-looking nobles wandered back and forth in front of the barrier, sweating in their gaudy finery, their eyes flicking idly between the slaves. They looked as though they were surveying a cartload of produce in search of the freshest cabbage.

Pain shot up into the elf’s skull, and she realized she was grinding her teeth almost hard enough to be heard over the child’s crying. She turned away from the stares and lowered herself to her side, pressing her face into the stone floor and concentrating on her own ragged breathing.

From her vantage point, she could see little other than the guards’ booted feet, patrolling in a steady rhythm. Every few minutes they scuffed through a dark crimson patch on the ground, the only remaining trace of a slave that had tried to make a break for freedom. They’d cut his throat on the spot, splattering blood on the elves still waiting to be herded into the pens, and turned whips and fists on the ones who had screamed.

Bile rose in her throat at the memory, and she shoved it down hard, tucking her chin against her chest and counting seconds in her head until the nausea passed. 

The shrieking on the other side of the pen reached a new pitch. She pressed her fingers harder against her ears, squeezing her eyes shut tight.

For the hundredth time, she tried to remember. 

_I must have a name. Everyone has a name._ Even the other slaves in the pit with her had names; she’d heard them calling back and forth to each other. She imagined a face looking at her with kind eyes and smiling lips, tried to visualize the mouth forming the right words, but the syllables were garbled and the voice remained stubbornly mute.

She drew a deep breath, ignoring the dust tickling at her nostrils, and reached up to rub at the tender spot on her head. The wound was still healing, but the bandage was gone, ripped off and tossed aside by a pair of brutish overseers who’d given her a cursory glance and pronounced her fit for sale. They’d dunked her head in a pail of murky water, holding her down and scrubbing at her scalp so roughly she’d almost blacked out from the pain. 

“Stop squirming, you dumb bitch,” one of them had snapped at her, cuffing her across the face when she’d tried to break free. “You think anyone’s gonna buy you with all that blood in your hair?”

Two new pairs of shoes came into her line of sight, lavish and expensive in contrast to the guards’ coarse boots, and stopped directly in front of her. She stared straight ahead, steeling her jaw against the muted conversation, heat scorching its way up her neck and flooding her face and ears.

It was little relief when the shoes turned and ambled away. She brought a hand to her face, scrubbing her palm over her skin. Her cheeks were strangely damp.

“They won’t stop _biting,_ ” she muttered.

Movement beside her drew her vision, and she glanced up at the elf sitting a few feet away from her. He was looking down at her, quizzical stare creasing a face that appeared older than it likely was, leathered by too many hours in the sun. 

“What’s biting?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She pushed herself upright, waving a hand in front of her face in a swatting motion. “Bugs of some kind. I keep feeling them prickling all over my skin. I suppose they’re just too small to see.”

His stare turned pitying, and he made a mournful clucking sound. “There’s no bugs, girl. ‘Least not aside from the flies. It’s the stares you’re feeling.” He gave her a smile, yellow and dotted with holes. “Don’t worry. Won’t take long ‘fore you don’t even notice it.” 

She worried at her lower lip, glancing around the pen, looking at each face. The other elves avoided her gaze, dull eyes fixed on the ground or staring vacantly into the distance. It was clear that the majority of them were not new to slavery, sitting in just another pen in just another marketplace. Desperation surged up again, and she turned back to him. 

“Can I ask you an…odd question?” She measured the words carefully. 

He blinked, then jerked his shoulders in a shrug, the joints stiff with poorly healed injuries. “Don’t see why not.”

“Could you tell me what I look like?” she said. 

The other elf blinked again, slowly, as though she’d just switched to a language he didn’t understand. “What?”

“What I _look_ like.” Impatience gnawed at her, laced with the same underlying dread. “My head was injured, and now I’ve lost all my memories.”

He gave a low whistle. “Must have been quite a knock you took, if ya can’t even remember your own face.” He narrowed his eyes, studying her like she was a painting in a gallery. 

“Well…” he finally said. “You’re an elf.”

She shot him a withering scowl. “I know _that_ much.” Her hands flew automatically to her ears, fingers running along the pointed tips. “What else?”

“You’re got green eyes. Yellow hair. Your nose is kinda too small for your face.” He squinted. “And you’ve got tattoos.” 

Her eyebrows shot up, her breath seizing in her chest. “Tattoos? Like—like a slave brand?” _Did I escape one master just to be snared by another?_

But the other elf shook his head. “Nah. Too fancy to be slave markings. Sort of delicate-lookin,’ really. S’pose maybe you could be one of them wood elves? My ma used to tell me stories about them, said they put markings all over their faces.” A vague, confused expression crossed his face. “But that was a long time ago.”

“Wood elves?” A sharp pang of emotion struck her, and it took a moment for her to identify it as hope. She clung to the feeling, her fingers curling into fists as though it were something tangible she could grasp onto. “What do you know about them? Anything else?”

“Just what my ma told me, like I said. But I can’t really remember much of it. She’s been dead a lot of years.” He made an apologetic face, moving as though to shrug again, but stopped as he thought better of it. “That’s all I got. Sorry, girlie.”

She gave a mumbled _thank you_ and turned away, running her fingers in hesitant strokes over her face. It felt…sharp, her jawline and cheekbones jutting out too far, though she supposed that was to be expected for anyone who had spent a prolonged period of time unconscious. Several days’ buildup of dust and grime scraped under her hands, and she grimaced, trying to rub it off as best she could. 

_Being tattooed should be a memorable event,_ she thought. _Perhaps if I could just see my reflection, it would help…_

But pools of water were few and far between in a crowded marketplace, and the overseers had been careful to keep the herd of elves far from anything made of glass. Frustration bubbled up, her breaths turned shallow, and the wound on her head chose that specific moment to resume its stabbing pains. 

She lowered herself gingerly to her side and brought her arms over her head, curling into herself and rocking back and forth like a fussy child. Her lips moved in a whispered prayer to gods whose names she didn’t know, begging for the pain to fade to a dull throb. 

She didn’t realize she’d dropped into fitful sleep until she found herself alone in an unfamiliar courtyard, spinning in endless circles as she searched for another sign of life. The sky was a dark, forbidding gray, the houses a collapsed ruin, and even the trees at the courtyard’s edge seemed to fix her with sinister grins. Whispering voices overcame her—soft at first, then guttural and growling—but the words were strange and mangled, impossible for her to discern. 

The courtyard disappeared without warning, replaced by a narrow corridor. Hard-packed mud pressed in around her on all sides, creating a damp chill that seeped through her clothing and made her shiver. The whispering continued, rising and falling but never ceasing, closing in around her just as tightly as the tunnel’s walls.

“What do you want? What are you saying?” she wanted to scream, but her mouth refused to open. 

A flicker of movement caught the edge of her vision, and she whirled to face the intruder. Her hands shot up and forward without her permission, and she felt a sudden warm tingling spread from her fingertips to her elbows, as though someone had held a torch to her skin, almost close enough to singe.

She stopped dead in her tracks and stared at her fingers, waiting to be struck with a burst of pain or terror, but neither came. 

It felt… _normal._

_How can you know what normal is when you don’t even remember your own name?_

A sharp pain jabbed between her ribs, cutting off the thought before she could formulate an answer. Her whole body jerked as she woke, and she gasped in a lungful of dusty air that left her doubled over in a coughing fit.

“Get up, filth,” growled the overseer looming over her, though his tone was colored more with boredom than with menace. He raised his boot again, its barbed toe aimed at her abdomen, and looked almost disappointed when she scrambled upright before the blow could land. 

An enormous hand caught her between her shoulder blades, shoving her nearly hard enough to send her face-first into the dirt again. Clamor rose all around her, angry yells and panicked bleats blending into a dull roar as the overseers rounded the pens, prodding the slaves into ragged lines. 

The elf dodged another swinging fist, falling in with the rest of the massing bodies, trying not to look at the terrified eyes or listen to the howling voices. Another tingling sensation prickled at her fingers, less powerful than it had been in the dream, but odd enough to notice. She stared down at her hands, giving them a brisk shake.

“Move!”

The overseer’s baton gave a meaty _whack_ as it connected with an unfortunate slave not far from her. The line jumped forward, and the elf moved with it, bumped and jostled in the crowd. A dais rose in the distance, no more than a stone’s throw away, with a smaller pen attached to its side. If she craned her head, the elf could glimpse flashes of brightly-colored fabric beyond the dais, lavish bodices and plumed sleeves barely fluttering in the sluggish breeze. 

“It’ll be one at a time,” the lead overseer barked as the rest herded the slaves into the pen. “No crowding and no stampeding. You savages try anything, don’t think we won’t slaughter the whole lot of you—there’s more where you all came from.” His head swiveled back and forth, piggish eyes sunken in his sweat-streaked face, and he waved a hand at a young adult male hovering near the pen’s edge.

“That one first,” he ordered. “Let’s get a move on.”

The elf looked away as the overseers half-dragged, half-shoved the male slave onto the stage. She could hear murmurs rise from the crowd, followed by a deep male voice spitting out rapid words in a language she couldn’t understand. A gavel banged, loud enough to make her jump, and the male slave was hustled away with shackles slapped around his wrists. He had hardly left the stage before the overseers returned to the pen, seizing the closest woman by her hair and pulling her kicking and screaming before the auctioneer. 

Dimly, the elf heard a harsh wheezing rise above the clamor to claw at her ears. She spun around to hiss at the offender, eyes fierce and teeth bared, before she recognized the sound of her own breathing. Her fingers clenched hard enough to hurt, bare toes digging painfully against the hard ground, arms held so stiff against her sides it felt as though they might snap off at the elbows. 

She turned her back to the stage, refusing to watch the overseers return to the pen again and again, scanning the other slaves’ faces instead. She glimpsed terror, helplessness, resignation—

A sudden swell of rage overwhelmed her, almost frightening in its intensity, though whether aimed at the other slaves, at the overseers, or at the world in general, she didn’t know. Heat swept from her face through her neck and shoulders in a stinging rush, flooding down her arms and into her hands. Her fingers itched, then tingled, then _ached_ —

The other slaves were staring at her.

She didn’t have time to ask what they were gaping at before she felt rough fingers on her arms and cold metal closing around her wrists. She reacted instantly, her whole body twisting to wrench itself free, but the hands clamped around her arms were inexorable as iron as they hauled her bodily up the stairs. The final push was so forceful that her head snapped back against her shoulders, and it took every ounce of willpower to keep from stumbling to her hands and knees. The nearest overseer helpfully grabbed her by the hair, yanking her upright and shoving her around to face the front of the stage.

A sea of faces swam in front of her, every eye raking her up and down. Behind her, the auctioneer began to spit out phrases in his garbled tongue, and the elf wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a curse that she couldn’t understand a word.

She was shaking all over, her teeth chattering in spite of the smothering heat. The stares stabbed at her like little knives, leaving her exposed and raw from head to toe. A sharp pain in her hands distracted her, and she looked down to see her nails digging into her palms with nearly enough force to draw blood. 

A shadow fell over her, and she glanced up. An overseer loomed nearby, gesturing at her with impatient jerking motions.

“Turn around,” he hissed in the common tongue, punctuating the command with a sharp yank on the chain attached to her wrists. “Slowly now, so they can get a good look at you.”

She didn’t move. A strange red haze obscured her vision, and the wound in her head began to throb, sending shocks of pain down her spine. She blinked rapidly, her breaths rattling in her throat, and the tingling in her hands reached a fever pitch.

The overseer rolled his eyes. “Right. The hard way it is, then.”

He waved a hand, and a second guard approached from the other side, his hands already reaching out to grab her. 

The elf watched him come. The noise from the crowd faded into the background, and the auctioneer’s prattle seemed slow and muted, finally disappearing altogether. She no longer noticed the weight of the shackles around her wrists, the cold metallic bite swallowed up in the heat surging from her fingertips to her elbows.

The guard took another step forward, close enough for her to see the whites of his eyes. His outstretched fingers brushed her forearm.

The elf’s hands jerked up, as though some deity had reached down to seize hold of the chain. Fire exploded from her fingers, a wall of flame so bright that her eyes snapped shut out of reflex, bursting heat swirling around her face with enough force to blow her hair back from her forehead. 

Almost absently, she noticed the tingling in her arms had finally ceased.

Time snapped back into focus with the guard’s deafening scream. Through the smoking haze, she could see him curled up on the dais, the flames twisting on his skin, both hands clawing at his face. The auctioneer had fallen silent mid-word, his jaw bobbing as he gaped at her, and the crowd’s murmurs swelled into a dull roar. 

The elf ignored them all, the chain clanking as she stared down at her hands. Her fingers curled toward her, the skin smooth and whole. Not a single hair was singed, and even the dirt remained crusted beneath her nails. 

Pain shot through her wrists without warning as the overseer hauled on the chain, and the stage rushed up to meet her. Angry shouts filled her ears, the dais shaking beneath her with the force of the guards’ thundering footsteps. Her wrists flexed, fingers straining, but the magic was gone as though it had never been. 

She barely glimpsed the overseer’s booted foot before it slammed into the side of her head. The garish colors in the crowd faded and blurred together, turning to a muddled mess of grays and browns. She frowned and squinted, fighting to focus, pushing back at the blackness gathering around her. 

But her head was too heavy and her eyelids heavier, and the darkness far stronger than any overseer’s grip.


	2. Chapter 2

“Wake up.”

The voice was far away, easy to ignore. Vaguely, the elf could feel her arm moving, a warm hand shaking her shoulder, but the darkness would not be beaten so easily.

“Wake up. You’ve slept long enough.”

It was closer now, and louder. The shaking continued, and the elf gradually became aware of something cold and hard scraping under her arm. Every joint was stiff and frozen, and her head felt as though someone had opened it up and stuffed it full of old dirty rags. 

She felt rather than heard herself groan, and the shaking stopped. 

“That’s it, nice and easy,” the voice murmured. It was young, feminine, and far more soothing than anything the elf could remember. “She’s waking up—Rayl, fetch some water.”

Her eyelids seemed to be stuck shut, as though someone had sewn them together, but the elf pried them open with a monumental effort. The atmosphere was blissfully dim, and she blinked, keeping her head still as she let her eyes adjust. A few moments passed before two shapes solidified out of the murky atmosphere, and when she squinted, she realized they were faces leaning over her.

“Easy, now,” one of them said, and smiled. “Can you sit up?”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out except a spluttering croak. A hand slipped beneath her shoulders and gently pulled her upright, and another wrapped her fingers around a worn wooden cup. 

“Drink up,” the woman said, and patted her back. “It’s a little bitter, but it should help clear your head.”

The water had an odd metallic tang, but it slipped easily down the elf’s throat. She drank slowly, drawing deep breaths between each sip, and let her eyes scan her surroundings.

She sat on a thin pallet inside a tiny one-room structure, with a hard-packed dirt floor and rickety walls. A meager fire burned in a pit at the center of the room, and several stained rugs lay in a pile nearby. A few chipped dishes sat in a neat row atop a rough-hewn table at the far side of the room. 

“Where am I?” she asked. The familiar ache pounded inside her skull, and she pressed her thumb and finger against the corners of her eyes. “The last thing I remember, I was—”

She choked on the end of the sentence, her fingers turning to claws against the cup. The woman smiled, but her eyes were dull.

“At the auction, yes,” she finished. “You put on quite the display, from what we heard. Caught the overseer’s eye. He likes the ones with fire, says they provide more of a challenge. That’s why he bought you.”

The elf stared at her, stomach churning. “What do you mean, ‘provide more of a challenge?’ What are you talking about?”

“For the mistress’s apprentices.” The woman’s smile turned pitying. “They’ll probably call for you soon. Tomorrow, or maybe even tonight. The ones like me and my boy—they don’t call for us as often, since we don’t have magic. And when they do, usually they just take blood from us.”

The elf rubbed her hands up and down her arms, the words jumbling in her head. “Take blood?”

“For their rituals.” The woman held out her arms. A mass of scars marked her skin, starkly visible even in the dim firelight, crossing in jagged lines over her lower arms, wrists, and palms. “It’s important work they do,” she said. “Running the city, and all.”

“Running the city?” The elf’s voice shot up an octave. “With your _blood_?”

“Hush, hush.” The woman twisted her fingers together, raising one hand as though to cover her mouth. She shot a nervous look toward the door. “Don’t want the overseer to come for us.”

She leapt up, suddenly all wide eyes and uneasy glances, and poked at the fire as though to make herself look busy. A moment passed, then another before her shoulders slowly relaxed, and she returned to the pallet.

“But I’m forgetting my manners,” she said, making disapproving clucking noises. “I should have introduced myself as soon as you woke up. I’m Akanthe, and this is my son Rayl.” She waved a hand at the child sitting nearby. “He doesn’t talk much, but he’s a good boy. What’s your name?”

The elf pressed her lips together, staring into the fire. “I don’t know.”

“Hmm?” Akanthe shot her a perplexed look. “Surely your mama must have called you something.”

“I don’t remember my mother.” She drew her knees up to her chest, tightening her arms around them. “Or anything else.” A small, mirthless laugh bubbled up in her chest. “Up until I was on the dais, I didn’t even know I could—could—”

She waved both hands, gesturing at the fire.

Akanthe’s eyes widened with something like awe. “You have magic like the mistress and you didn’t even know it?”

“I’m sure I knew, at some point.” She looked down at her fingers, trying to imagine them summoning a ball of fire at will. “But not anymore.”

“That must have been so frightening.” Akanthe shuddered. “To have flames just come bursting out of your hands, without even trying.”

The elf furrowed her forehead, still staring at her hands. “No, not frightening. Surprising, perhaps.” She closed her eyes, remembering the brief but heady rush of power, the guard screaming as he’d dropped like a stone. “Exhilarating, really.”

She opened her eyes. Akanthe was looking at her warily.

“Well, _I_ would have been frightened,” she said, and gave a nervous giggle that morphed into a cough. “You truly don’t remember anything at all from before you came here?”

The elf shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Oh. Well, sometimes that can be a blessing,” Akanthe said, and gave her hand a quick pat before darting away. “We’ll just have to come up with something new to call you. You can’t go around nameless, after all.” She tilted her head, face screwing up in thought. “How about Aurea? It means ‘golden.’ Always wished it were my name, not that it would fit me.”

The elf narrowed her eyes. “Golden?”

“For your hair, of course.” Akanthe twirled a finger in her own mousy locks. “It shines in the firelight. Like the mistress’s jewelry.”

“Oh.” Her hands went to her head, gingerly running through the tangled strands. They felt matted and coarse and not at all shining. “I forgot it was blond.”

“Mistress have mercy.” Akanthe clucked again. “Something wiped you clean, that’s for certain. So what do you think? Is there something else you want to be called?”

She hesitated, letting her hands drift to her face, smoothing over dirt-caked skin and sunken cheeks. She tried to imagine a real person with a real identity hidden under all the grime, waiting to be remembered.

To take a name not her own felt like admitting defeat, surrendering to whatever gods or fate had stolen her memories, and yet…to have no name at all seemed almost worse, another blow heaped on top of the misery of slavery.

 _It isn’t a defeat_ , she told herself stubbornly, setting her jaw. _Just a delay. Surely I’ll remember soon, or someone will come for me, and...I’ll go from there._

“Very well,” she said. “You can call me Aurea. For now.”

“Oh, wonderful!” Akanthe gave an excited little squirm. “I’m glad you like it. So now, Aurea…how are you feeling? Can you stand? I’m supposed to see that you’re fit and ready when they call for you—that’s what the overseer said when he brought you back from the auction. It’s one of my tasks, to keep me busy when I—when I haven’t been called.” She tugged at the edge of one sleeve, the thin fabric failing to conceal the mangled skin on her arms.

“Well, my head still feels as though it’s about to split open,” said the elf. _No—Aurea, now_ , she thought. _Remember that, if nothing else._ “But I suppose that’s nothing new.”

The tiny hut swam around her as she shifted to her hands and knees, then slowly pushed herself upright. She braced herself against the wall with one hand, waiting for Akanthe’s face to stop fading in and out of her vision, threatening to disappear. 

“That’s it,” the other elf encouraged. Her tone was bright, but Aurea didn’t miss the glance she shot over her shoulder at the door. “You’ll be ready for the overseer in no time.”

“Wait,” Aurea said. “Before we go any further…is there anything I could look at to see my reflection? A mirror? Or a pool of water, perhaps?”

“Well…” Akanthe hesitated, sucking her lower lip into her mouth. “I do have something.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, and Aurea had to lean in to hear. “I’m not supposed to have it—the overseer would take it away if he knew, so you mustn’t speak of it to anyone.”

She scurried across the room to the pile of rags that served as bedding, reaching beneath them to pull out a small battered mirror. 

“It’s all I have left of my ma,” she explained, cradling it almost reverently as she walked back to Aurea. “She passed on last year. The mistress’s apprentices…well, they needed all of her blood.”

The mirror was almost weightless in Aurea’s hands, little more than a cracked piece of glass framed by cheap, tarnished metal. She took a deep breath, all ten fingers tightening on the handle as she peered down at the surface.

A thin, suspicious face stared back at her, partly obscured by the shock of dirty blond hair falling over one eye. She raised a hand to push it out of the way, and her fingertips lingered over the tattoo spanning her forehead, its pale lines almost invisible in the hut’s scanty light. 

She focused on the markings, hardly daring to blink. Seconds ticked by, stretching into minutes.

“Is it coming back to you?” Akanthe finally asked, her hushed voice breaking the silence. “Your memory?”

Aurea didn’t answer, fingers still tracing the designs etched into her skin, a series of beautifully inked twists and curves that were clearly the work of a skilled artist. They were delicate, elaborate, and utterly meaningless. 

“No,” she ground out, and pushed the mirror back into Akanthe’s waiting hands, letting the disappointment sour the back of her throat. “There’s nothing.”

* * *

She was back in the tunnels again, her harsh breaths rattling in her ears as she ran and ran. Her entire chest ached with a dull burn, and her feet felt as heavy as though someone had tied bricks around her ankles. 

It didn’t matter. Her body continued to push forward, though whether fleeing from some unseen menace or pressing toward a goal just beyond her reach, she could never tell.

The first whispers hissed in her ear, somewhere off to her left, and she skittered sideways even as her feet kept to their pounding rhythm. Her hands flew to cover her ears, though the gesture was futile, the whispers and growls piercing through her fingers to claw at the inside of her skull. She bared her teeth and increased her pace, rounding a bend and ducking inside a smaller side tunnel that branched off from the main path.

The whispers wavered, slowed, and stopped. She had little time to wonder at their absence before a flash of movement caught her eye, a pale flicker against the tunnel’s dark walls.

For the first time, her frenzied pace faltered. She shifted directions, following the movement as though drawn by a string, eyes darting to the flicker as it came again.

“Who’s there?” she called. Her fingers itched, and she held out one hand, breathing in deep and narrowing her eyes in concentration. Magic pulsed to life, a ball of soft blue light gathering in her palm and chasing away the shadows ahead.

A figure stood at the tunnel’s end, as still as stone, head upraised as though seeking counsel from some ethereal source. Its battered armor left the arms and legs bare, showing scraped elbows and knobby knees, white skin marred by dust and bruises. Tangled blond hair spilled down its back and shoulders, so pale it was almost silver. 

It turned as Aurea approached, revealing an elven woman, so thin and delicate she looked as though she might break in half. Disheveled braids framed her face, and intricate tattoos stood out starkly against pallid skin.

She caught sight of Aurea and smiled, glowing recognition spreading across her face. She reached out with one hand, her mouth opening, a name forming on her lips.

The spell winked out in Aurea’s palm, quick as a flame doused by a pail of water, and the chamber plunged into darkness. She sucked in a sharp breath, stretching out both hands, but her fingers met only air.

“Wait!” she called. “Don’t go! Where are you? _Who_ are you?”

_“Aurea…”_

The voice was thin and far away, reaching her as though from a great distance. She spun around, face twisting in frustration, arms still outstretched.

“That’s not my name!” she shouted. “You know me, don’t you? Who am I? Where did you go?”

“Aurea!”

She jolted upright, eyes snapping open, thrashing arm nearly connecting with Akanthe’s face. The other elf skittered away, restless hands wringing and flapping like a hummingbird’s wings. Her eyes were wide and fearful.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” she bleated, stumbling over the words. “But you have to come—you have to come now. The overseer’s here, outside. If we don’t line up with the others we’ll all be whipped—or worse. Come on!” 

She scurried out of the hut, her son almost tripping on her heels. Aurea ground her hands against her eyes, clinging to the remnants of the dream replaying itself in her mind’s eye.

_No time. Go. You can…remember later._

The sunlight was harsh on her face as she pushed the door open, ignoring its creaking protest. She threw up a hand to shield her eyes, weak legs nearly folding under her as she stumbled forward, her stomach rolling and her head throbbing.

“Come on.”

Akanthe’s hand closed around her wrist with a surprisingly strong grip, dragging her toward the ragged line-up of elves standing before the barred gate. Several guards stalked back and forth, faces impassive, gauntleted hands hefting cudgels large enough to smash a skull in one blow. Aurea glimpsed dark red bloodstains crusted along one blunted edge, and for one terrifying moment she thought she would be sick.

“Stand here.” Akanthe gave her a push. “Don’t look the overseer in the eye. He doesn’t like that.” She tried for a smile, but it came out wobbly. “Everything will be all right.”

Aurea stared at her, hard, trying to catch her shifting gaze. “Will it?”

Akanthe swallowed and looked away, pulling her son close against her side. 

A shout sounded behind the compound wall, and the gate creaked open, three male slaves struggling under its weight. One nearly went sprawling as a burly guard pushed past, and the other two redoubled their efforts, jaws clenched and bare heels digging into the hard mud.

“Here he comes,” Akanthe whispered, lips barely moving. Her twitching fingers fluttered over Aurea’s arm. “If he calls you, go right away. Don’t hesitate, or you’ll get a beating bad enough to make you lose all the rest of your memories.”

One of the guards at the gate barked a command, and Akanthe cut herself off, jaw snapping shut with an audible click. Aurea followed her gaze, eyes falling on the human male striding through the wall’s narrow opening. 

The overseer didn’t look all that different from the other humans she’d seen. He was tall and lean, with a pinched face and a sour expression reminiscent of someone who’d bitten into something unpleasant. He came to a stop at the front of the line, scowl deepening as his eyes scanned the row of slaves.

“You,” he growled, gesturing without preamble. “You. And you.” 

Aurea watched the small group grow one by one, the chosen slaves huddling together off to one side of the gate. An older woman. A middle-aged man. A child no older than eleven or twelve. A young adult man. Some moved slowly, hobbled by age or by unhealed injuries, and were rewarded by icy blasts of magic from the overseer’s outstretched hands. 

“You.”

She looked up. The overseer stood in front of her, eyes sharp as splinters, magic already crackling around his fingers.

She wanted to mirror the gesture, to throw his magic back in his face, to hear the crackle of flames on his skin and savor his scream. She remembered the guard at the auction, twisting and writhing at her feet, face contorted in shock and agony.

But she remembered just as well the boot slamming into her head, the sharp spike of pain flaring up the base of her skull, the way the world had spun and blurred around her. One foot jerked forward, then the other, moving without being told, carrying her toward the group at the gate. She watched their faces as she drew near, staring at her without seeing her, their eyes dull and their shoulders hunched.

 _This can’t be me,_ she thought wildly. _This can’t be all that lies ahead of me._

“Move, you maggots.” One of the guards swung his cudgel at them almost lazily, and the group skittered toward the gate. Behind them, the slaves not chosen were already scattering, trudging back to their huts.

Aurea tried to look back, but the gate swung shut behind her, leaving her with nothing but fear stabbing at her chest and bile rising in her throat.


	3. Chapter 3

“This way. Come on, Aurea, back to the hut. You can do it.”

The world was spinning so fast she could hardly stand, and it was all she could do just to keep her eyes open. She felt Akanthe’s thin shoulders slip under her arm, supporting most of her weight as she stumbled back toward the tiny shanty. 

They made it halfway before she dropped to her knees and heaved, but her empty stomach produced nothing but bile, harsh and burning at the back of her throat. Akanthe hovered next to her, restless hands patting at her shoulders. 

“How much further?” Aurea gritted out. She looked up, squinting, but the hut swam in front of her like a mirage.

“A few more steps. You can make it.” She could hear the anxiety lacing Akanthe’s tone. “Please, Aurea. The overseer will punish us both if you lose consciousness here. He says it’s unseemly.” 

She wasn’t sure if she crawled or staggered the rest of the way, wasn’t aware of anything at all until she felt coarse fabric under her cheek. Her whole body ached, limbs scratching feebly against the pile of old rugs. Shapes and voices faded in and out, fragmented and dim, and for a time she knew nothing at all.

When she opened her eyes, the room was mercifully still. She stirred on the pallet, a harsh cough rattling deep in her chest, and sensed movement as Akanthe jumped up across the room.

“It’s good to see you awake,” the other elf said, kneeling next to her. “Here. We have a little broth, if you think you can keep it down.”

Aurea pushed herself upright with an effort, wrapping unsteady hands around the small mug. “How long was I out?”

“A few hours.” Akanthe hesitated. “Do you…want to talk about it?”

“There isn’t much to say.” She closed her eyes and concentrated on just breathing. “They made us cast spells, over and over, until we couldn’t anymore. The woman, the oldest one—I think she literally dropped dead from exhaustion. And I hardly remember anything about magic in the first place. Half the time I couldn’t do what they wanted, and the other half I just reacted out of pure instinct, like at the auction.”

She looked up at Akanthe. “Why do they do this? Are they trying to gain something? Do they just want to see how much we can take?”

“Shhh.” Akanthe wrung her hands, glancing around as though she expected the overseer to materialize from thin air. “Best not to even ask those types of questions.”

“I want to _know._ ” Aurea spat the last word, harsher than she’d intended, and stifled a grunt as pain shot through her skull. Her teeth ground together as she rode out the pulsing ache, and she drew a ragged breath. 

It was difficult to make out Akanthe’s face in the dim light, but she heard the other woman sigh.

“They don’t exactly take the time to explain their motivations to us,” she said. “But as best I can tell, sometimes it’s like practice for them. They use us as targets, something they can use to hone their skills. Other times, it’s for their rituals—like when they take blood from me and Rayl.” She sighed again. “And then on other occasions…I think it’s just for fun.”

“ _Fun_?” Aurea hissed. Her stomach rolled, and she set down the mug of broth, fingers curling into fists.

“It’s very difficult, being the mistress’s apprentice,” Akanthe said. “There are many of them, and only one of her. Only one will succeed her when she…retires. So they have to prove themselves, each trying to outdo the others. If they didn’t do something to relieve their stress, I suppose they would all go mad.” 

Aurea shot her an incredulous look. “You say that as though it hasn’t already happened.”

“Hush, hush.” Akanthe’s fingers twisted together. “You must learn to curb your tongue. To speak out against the mistress or her apprentices…”

Aurea bared her teeth, and defiance sparked through her, driving away the pain and exhaustion. “I won’t roll over and lick their boots,” she said, her voice low and hard. “They’ll kill me, first.”

“And they _will_.” Akanthe’s voice rose. “You saw that today. Sometimes the ones who are called don’t come back.”

Silence fell, filling the cramped room. Aurea stared into the distance, trying not to think of the slaves who had fallen, their bodies sprawled unmoving in the sand.

“Are there ever…” She paused, measuring the words carefully. “Are there ever times when no one returns at all?”

Akanthe was still for a long moment before finally giving a single nod.

“Not often,” she said quietly. “It’s…costly, after all, to replace slaves. But sometimes, yes. It does happen.”

Aurea looked down into the mug, pushing it away. “No one ever dies of old age here, do they?”

Akanthe’s gaze darted to the far side of the room, where her son lay sleeping. When she looked back, her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “No,” she whispered. “No, we don’t.”

* * *

Time was the first thing that ceased to matter. 

Hours blended into days, days into weeks, and weeks blurred and stretched and suddenly became months. Aurea learned that the mistress and her apprentices operated by no schedule but their own whims, not even guided by the rising and setting of the sun. Callings could come at any time, from the bright hot mid-afternoon to the black night hours when most of the city lay quiet.

She slept when she was able, usually no more than several hours at a time before she was jolted from slumber, whether by the overseer’s bark and the guards’ whips or by her own uneasy subconscious mind. Her nightmares stretched on relentlessly, plaguing her with the endless whispers and narrow tunnels, and each one ended with the pale elf girl. Sometimes she turned toward Aurea, smiling and opening her mouth to speak. More often, she fled into the shadows—her tiny form moving impossibly fast—and no matter how hard Aurea ran, pushing herself to the point of collapse, she could never catch up.

No other memories returned. Sometimes she stood outside the hut, scanning the compound walls in search of weak points, but the barriers were too implacable, the guards’ patrols too constant, and her own body too prone to failure. Other times she lay on the dirty pallet, convulsing with fever or chills, and imagined that someone from her past might come and tell the mistress it was all a mistake—that she was someone important, someone that _mattered_ , someone never meant to be a worn and battered slave.

But no one ever did. 

It was only when her anger burned and magic crackled between her fingers that she felt herself come to life, her waning strength reappearing. She listened when the apprentices growled at each other in their unfamiliar language, picking out often-repeated words and learning their meanings, and began to anticipate their orders before they came. She learned all the insults hurled at her and the other slaves, letting them fester at the back of her mind, driving her forward. Her spells seemed to feed off her rage, and with each new calling she learned to harness it, bending the elements to her will. It felt right, to channel everything within her into fire or ice or other arcane forces, the pent-up fury finding its only release. 

It hardly seemed to matter that every calling left her utterly spent, unable to keep any food in her stomach, legs trembling so badly they could scarcely support her weight. Each time she crawled back to the hut on her hands and knees, fresh bruises on her clammy skin, and clung to consciousness just long enough to let Akanthe hold a cup of water to her lips.

“How many callings do you suppose one person has survived?” she asked one night, glassy eyes staring straight ahead. “Fifty? A hundred?”

“I don’t know.” She could hear the frown in Akanthe’s voice. “Why do you ask?”

“I’ve been keeping track of mine.” She reached to her right, fingers brushing over a nearby wooden plank. Little notches were carved into the surface, lined up in ragged rows. “One mark for every time I come back.”

Akanthe knelt beside her, peering down at the notches. “Aurea…”

“What?”

Akanthe’s mouth was a thin, worried line. “You won’t have many more if you keep pushing yourself like this. Don’t you see what’s happening? The reason they keep calling you so much is because they see how defiant you are, and how much it takes out of you every time. They _want_ to break you.”

“Let them try.” Aurea felt her lips stretch, though she wasn’t sure if the expression was a smile or a snarl. 

The other elf shook her head, a small smile crossing her face. “You have determination to spare, that’s for certain. I just hope it’s enough.”

 _Hope_.

The word turned over in Aurea’s head as she rolled onto her side, eyes drifting over the notches in the wall as she waited for sleep to find her. Vaguely, she recalled a time when she still hoped—hoped for her memories to return, hoped for an escape, hoped for something that always seemed just beyond her reach.

Like the passage of time, it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

* * *

“Aurea?”

She blinked, frowning, and raised her head. Her hand lingered over the wood, fingers resting on the latest notch. The rows and columns had grown as time marched on, stretching across the plank’s length. “What is it, Akanthe?”

The other elf hovered in the doorway, silhouetted against the early morning sun. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, taking a few cautious steps forward. “How are you feeling?”

Aurea let out a long sigh, letting her nails scrape against the harsh wood. “I’ve been called five times in the past seven days. How do you _think_ I’m feeling?”

“I’m sorry,” Akanthe said again. She looked at the ground, scuffing her toes as though she expected to be struck. “That was a stupid question, wasn’t it?”

Aurea closed her eyes. She pressed her thumb and fingers against her temples, feeling her pulse throb. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” she said, trying to keep the weariness from her tone. “You don’t need to apologize for things that aren’t your fault.”

Akanthe bobbed her head, reaching down to pat Aurea’s hand. “Well, perhaps this will cheer you up. The mistress is having one of her special deliveries today, and when it arrives, we’ll be helping to take it into the house and make sure everything is stored properly. It isn’t much, I know, but it’s one of the only chances we get to leave here.” She waved a hand at the hut. “Aside from being called, of course.”

“Special delivery?” Aurea echoed. “What exactly is that?”

“Oh, all sorts of things.” Akanthe waved a hand. “Clothes, jewelry, books, all the different types of food you can imagine. I don’t know what she uses it all for. Lavish parties for all her friends and rivals, I suppose.” Her eyes went starry for a moment before she looked back at Aurea. “We’re not allowed to touch the jewels, of course, but we’ll be carrying the rest of it. It’s a great honor to be allowed inside the house, you know. Just make sure you don’t touch anything not part of the delivery, and don’t speak to anyone. Of course.”

“Of course.” Aurea gave a wan smile.

“It should get here soon. I’ll let you know when it does.” Akanthe patted her hand again, squatting down to peer at her face. “Until then, you should probably rest some more. You look pale. You’ve lost weight again, too.”

“I’ll be fine.” Her head spun, but she ignored it. Her fingers tapped absently against the wood, rubbing over the notches. 

“I’ll be fine,” she whispered again, too low for Akanthe to hear.

* * *

The entrance hall leading into the mistress’s house was just as impressive as Akanthe’s breathless exclamations had promised. It seemed as though every inch was fashioned of marble or covered with gold, with elaborate paintings on the walls and thick plush carpets sprawling over the floors. Further in, the rugs grew thinner and the decorations plainer, yet even there the soaring ceilings and enormous windows were enough to slow Aurea’s steps. 

“I used to scrub these floors,” Akanthe said, sounding almost reverent as they entered a side hallway, lugging boxes full of greaves and gauntlets. “Polished them until they were so shiny you could see your face in them. I don’t do that anymore, though.” She shifted the box in her arms, a twinge of pain crossing her face. “My wrists aren’t what they used to be. Never quite healed right, after…”

She trailed off, shaking away the memory with a jerk of her head, shoulders twitching in a half-shrug. “Never mind. When they need blood, then blood is what I give. Come on, the armory’s this way.”

She set off down another hallway, her pace brisk. Aurea broke into a labored trot to catch up, staggering under both the load of the box she carried and the weight of her own exhaustion.

The armory jutted off to one side of the passageway, an almost cavernous room lined with suits of metal and leather, interspersed with broadswords that Aurea couldn’t have lifted with both hands. She eyed the designs emblazoned across the cuirasses, jaw tightening as she recognized the insignia of the overseer and his guards.

“After we finish here, there are crates of food to unload,” Akanthe said, already sliding armor pieces into place on the stands. “So I’ll get to show you the kitchens! That’s where my ma used to work, you know. She was the best cook in the mistress’s whole estate, that’s what they all used to say. She made the most mouthwatering apple dumplings. Of course we weren’t supposed to have any, but sometimes she would slip me a taste…”

Aurea let her voice fade into the background, stifling a groan of relief as her box clattered to the table. She bent over it for a moment, waiting for the pounding in her head to cease. 

_Maybe Akanthe was right_ , she thought dully. _Five notches in seven days. If I’m called again tomorrow..._

She sighed and reached into the box, drawing out the first gauntlet. Her fingers skimmed up and down the finely-tooled leather, its surface smooth as freshly churned butter under her tired hands. She let her eyes drift closed for just a moment, breathing in deeply, savoring the heady scent.

_—The armory seemed to disappear without warning, throwing her into a different room—smaller and cozier, lit by a single torch flickering on the wall. She was warm all over, her whole body relaxed, the rumpled sheets beneath her deliciously soft. Her breaths were deep and slow, her eyelids fluttering against her pillow._

_A hand settled on her hip, large and warm, its fingers drumming a gentle beat on her bare skin. Her eyes opened just a fraction, and a drowsy smile crossed her face as the hand skimmed up and down her side, playing over her ribs._

_She rolled onto her stomach, and the man beside her shifted, the bed creaking under his weight. He propped himself up on one elbow, other hand moving to trace a path along her spine. She shivered under his touch, and let out a quiet hiss of pleasure when his fingers pressed against the tender spots at the base of her neck._

_Her hair hung loose and damp over her shoulders, and he pushed it out of the way, leaning down to replace his fingers with his mouth. She felt her breathing catch, eyes opening wider. Something warm stirred in her chest, and she squirmed under him, rolling over onto her back._

_“Again?” she said. Her face creased in a scowl, but the hitch in her voice betrayed her. Her breathing quickened, toes curling under the sheets. “Insatiable human.”_

_She felt him smile between kisses, lips warm against the hollow of her throat. Both hands settled on her waist, tugging her closer. His body was hard and long, smelled of leather and pine and salt, and his proximity made her chest tighten and her head swim in ways she couldn’t describe._

_“Your fault,” he murmured. His voice was deep and slightly hoarse, almost a growl._

_One hand left her waist to slide down the length of her arm. She caught it in hers, studying the veins mapping his skin below the knuckles, the long callused fingers that knew her body nearly as well as she did._

_But then his mouth was traveling lower, lips and teeth and stubble against her skin. Her grip tightened on his hand, her head thrown back against the pillow, her lips forming his name—_

“—didn’t pass any of her cooking skills on to me, unfortunately. It’s a blessing the mistress never put me in the kitchens, that’s for certain! Even Rayl turns his nose up when I make meals for him, and that child would eat mud if I would let him—”

Aurea sucked in a long, shuddering breath, the sound breaking through Akanthe’s chatter. The other elf looked up, her eyes widening as she caught sight of Aurea’s expression.

“Are you all right? You look strange.” She dropped the gauntlet she held and hurried over, peering at Aurea’s face. “Did you see a bug? They get in with the shipments sometimes, nasty creatures.”

“No, I—“ Aurea braced herself on the table, waiting for her racing heart to slow. “I think I just remembered something.” She shook her head, disbelief washing over her like a wave. “I’d stopped hoping it would ever happen.”

“You remembered?” Akanthe gasped. “Just now? What was it? What happened?”

“I was just holding one of the gauntlets, and I smelled the leather and—” The words tumbled out in a rush, and she forced herself to stop, drawing in another deep breath. Tingling heat still flooded her from head to toe, heightening all her senses. It felt similar to the pull of magic and yet somehow entirely different. “All of a sudden it was as though I wasn’t here anymore. I was back there—wherever _there_ was. And I was—I was with someone. A man.”

“Oh.” Akanthe’s eyebrows shot up, a slow grin stretching her lips. “Ohhh. Is that why your face is pink all the way to the tips of your ears?”

Aurea resisted the urge to clap her hands over her cheeks, fingers tightening on the table’s edge instead. “There’s something else, though. He was…” She fidgeted, staring down at the gauntlets without seeing them. “He was a human.”

Akanthe went still, her eyes round. “Oh,” she said again. “I’m sorry, I—I shouldn’t have presumed. Are you all right? Was it…” She swallowed, lowering her voice. “A bad memory?”

“Not at all.” A flicker of warmth twisted through her chest, following the path of the human’s hands. “When I was remembering, it didn’t seem to matter at all that he was human. I felt…”

She closed her eyes, sorting through the flood of emotions. “I felt _content_.” She gave an almost disbelieving laugh. “I don’t think I even knew what that felt like until just now.”

Sudden pressure on her fingers jolted her back to the present, and she looked down to see Akanthe gripping her hand. 

“Hold on to that, Aurea,” she whispered fiercely. All her lighthearted prattle had vanished, and her eyes burned in her pale face, her gaze more intense than Aurea had ever seen it. “Most people, when they’ve been called over and over as many times as you have, they just _break_. You’re the strongest person I know, but it’s starting to happen to you. All you have is your anger, and I can see that starting to destroy you even faster than the mistress’s apprentices.”

Her fingernails dug into Aurea’s hand. “To survive in this world you have to have something to hold on to. This man that you saw, the woman you see in your dreams—it doesn’t matter if they’re human or elf or anything else. They’re important enough to you that they’re pushing past whatever’s holding back your memories. Maybe they’re still out there, searching for you. You had another life. You could _still_ have it. Don’t give up on that, no matter how brutal it gets.”

Aurea stared at her for a long moment before she steeled her jaw, giving a slow nod. The memory was still vivid in her mind’s eye, proof that everything she’d once been was not lost. Hope rushed through her in a sudden surge, strange but exhilarating, stronger than even her anger. She straightened her spine, pushing the pain and exhaustion to the back of her mind.

“I won’t,” she said, and tightened her fingers around Akanthe’s hand. “I’ll survive, no matter what.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You.”

She stepped forward almost before the word had left the overseer’s mouth. _Another calling_ , she thought, steeling her jaw as she went to join the other chosen slaves. _Another notch in the wall._

It was a small group this time, six in total, easily herded through the city. No one did more than glance at them as the guards marched them down the winding streets, flashing their cudgels at any who lagged behind. Aurea glimpsed other slaves around every corner, some running errands for their masters, others being dragged along in chains. 

She didn’t know why she always tried to meet their eyes, unsure what she hoped she might find there. It hardly mattered. Most of them shuffled past with their heads bowed, and those few that did look up had wildly darting glances, never settling on anything or anyone for more than a second’s pause. 

The trek seemed to stretch on longer than usual, and soon the bustling streets turned to narrower alleys. Voices faded, and the city’s omnipresent grime built up on the stone surfaces, catching between Aurea’s bare toes. She frowned, trying to ignore the cold knot of dread settling in her stomach, and cast a glance over her shoulder at the guards bringing up the rear. 

_Where are they taking us?_

It wasn’t until they reached the city’s walls that the overseer’s men brought them to a halt. Words passed between the guards, too low and quick for Aurea to hear, and the gate began to creak open a moment later. 

The other slaves shifted beside her, eyes wide and uneasy, and a few murmured to each other before a sharp command from the guard cut them short. The gap widened inch by inch, and Aurea risked the guard’s wrath to lean forward, straining to catch a glimpse of the outside world. 

As if reading her mind, one of the overseer’s men gave a hacking laugh that sounded more like lung disease than a mirthful noise. “You’ll get an eyeful of it soon enough,” he rasped. “Come on, out you go—all of you.” 

Beyond the walls the wind howled like a spurned lover, whipping at their clothing as they filed out one at a time. Aurea clenched her fists and tried not to shiver, ignoring the goosebumps popping up on her bare arms and legs. Wide-open terrain spilled out in front of her, bisected by the path leading into the city, a dusty road that bore tracks from hundreds of wagons’ wheels and travelers’ feet. 

_Slaver caravans_ , she thought, jolted back to the first day she could remember, when she’d woken up on the wagon with nothing but a parched throat and a bloodstained bandage. Pain shot through her temples at the memory, and she raised both hands to her head, fingers tracing over the long-healed wound. For just a moment, she was tempted to take off down the road and not look back. Maybe if she ran long and hard enough, she might find something, _somewhere_ that would remind her who she really was—

The gate groaned behind her, cutting into her thoughts. The other slaves spun around, jostling each other, wild-eyed and skittish. 

The overseer’s men were nowhere to be seen, and the gate was slowly creaking shut. 

It seemed as though hours passed before it settled back into place with a ponderous _thud_ , the sound echoing in the sudden silence. For a long moment, no one moved, the tiny group huddled together more out of fear than cold. 

The murmuring started first, hesitant and confused, growing in a slow crescendo until it was a small cacophony of terrified bleating and excited yelling.

“Don’t you see?” One voice rose above the rest, and the others turned to look. “No guards, no overseers, no apprentices. No walls to keep us in. They’re giving us our freedom!”

“Freedom?” another slave echoed, her voice shrill with fear. “We have nothing but the clothes on our backs—no money, no work, no place to go—”

“Don’t be fools!” Aurea burst out, her fists balling by her sides. “When have they ever shown us anything but manipulation and cruelty? Do you truly think they would let us go free out of the goodness of their hearts? You’ve lost your wits if you think this is anything but an experiment or a game like any other.”

“Believe whatever you like,” the first slave shot back, already backpedaling away. “I’m not wasting this chance. I’m getting as far away from here as I can.”

He turned to sprint down the road, kicking up dust behind him until he was nothing but a blur in the distance. The rest of the group began to fracture, splitting off in different directions until Aurea was left alone in front of the gate, her heart pounding and her eyes darting back and forth.

_I can’t stay out here_ , she thought. _It’s too wide open. Too easy for them to find me._

To her right, she could see trees clustered together, interrupting the gently sloping line of the horizon. She moved toward them without thinking, as though pulled by forces beyond her control, feet churning under her as she ran faster and faster.

She tried to ignore the fact that it felt like one of her dreams, like she was fleeing from something she would never be able to escape.

The forest was cool and dim, the trees towering over her like magisters’ castles, yet somehow the atmosphere seemed calming instead of threatening. She let her steps slow, then stop, coming to rest against a thick trunk that soared high above her head. The bark scratched through her tattered clothing as she leaned back against the tree, the sap sticking under her fingers and clumping in her hair. 

She closed her eyes, listening to the nearby birds’ chirping, the insects buzzing in the underbrush, the wind stirring the leaves overhead. 

The tingling started in her fingers, spreading up her arms and down through her torso, making her eyes snap open and her heartbeat quicken. By now the sensation was as familiar as breathing, and she raised both hands, letting magic pulse between them. 

_You shouldn’t_ , her mind whispered. _They’ll be able to see the light from the spell. It’ll lead them right to you._

She ignored it. The spell grew, magic rippling and snapping around every finger, its purple-blue glow reflected in her eyes.

It was hardly even a surprise when she felt the ground shift beneath her. She narrowed her eyes in concentration, gathering all the spellpower she could muster, fighting to calm her racing thoughts and let instinct take over. Her feet left the ground, rising an inch, then another, until she was hovering above the soil. She stared down at the forest floor, hardly daring to breathe, watching the tree’s massive roots begin to creak and writhe under her feet.

Her eyes slipped half-closed, and she slowly spread her hands, palms up, still pulsing with blue light. She could _feel_ the tree move, as though it were a creature she had bridled, her mind aligning with the roots and branches in a way she couldn’t explain. Her finger twitched, and the ground trembled in response, the roots’ vibrations like the ripples in a simmering pot of water. 

She took a deep breath, holding it until colored spots burst behind her eyelids. The roots coiled and stirred, waiting for her command, restless and wild things that had been dormant far too long. 

The sudden, unfamiliar sensation of _control_ was so heady that it nearly knocked her backward against the tree’s trunk. Her breaths came fast and harsh, and all her senses sharpened, blood pounding and magic crackling. The light swirled in her palms and crawled up her arms, wreathing her head like a halo, thrumming in time with her thundering heartbeat.

In the distance, she heard a soft _crack_.

Her head jerked up, eyes snapping open. The sky had gone dark, the last streaks of dusk barely visible beyond the trees’ branches. She blinked, startled. _How long have I—?_

It didn’t matter. Her nerves flared and prickled at her skin, and she stared hard into the shadows threaded between the trees, searching for any trace of movement. She curled her fingers into fists, extinguishing the spell’s light, leaving the forest as black as the tunnels that always plagued her dreams. 

Her toes scuffed against something hard, and she looked down at the root scraping her callused skin. It was thick and gnarled, embedded deep in the soil, and failed to budge when she poked it with the ball of her foot. For a moment she wondered if she had only imagined herself controlling it—perhaps it had been just another unsettling vivid dream, the subconscious desire of a powerless slave, or perhaps she’d been called one too many times and her mind had finally snapped—

The doubt slithered in her thoughts, as insidious as the whispers in her nightmares. She pushed it away with a sharp shake of her head. 

_I have to keep moving._ The thought was as resolute as it was grim. _If they want to drag me back to the slave pens, they’ll have to catch me first._

She slipped around the tree, letting her hand linger on the bark for a moment before she darted to the next one. She wove between the trunks, her steps soundless, eyes and ears straining for any hint of pursuit. 

Minutes ticked by with no sign of life except her own breath hissing in her ears. She felt her pace begin to slow, her forehead creasing, her thoughts racing faster than her feet. 

Was it possible that that other slave had been right after all? That they’d been set free, that she was running from nothing but her own paranoia? That _she_ had been the fool instead of he?

“No,” she hissed aloud almost as soon as the thought crossed her mind, scorn dripping from her voice. “They would never just let us go free. _Never_.”

As though in response, she heard another twig snap, the _crack_ as faint as the first had been. She whipped around, her teeth bared, blood running colder than the night air. Her eyes jerked back and forth, darting from tree to bush to tree and back again.

Nothing.

Her lips curled back in an expression that was neither smile nor grimace, and she spread her hands, letting tendrils of magic spark at her fingertips.

_Enough of this._

“I know you’re there,” she called, letting her voice carry, her tone sharp as a whip-crack. “Aren’t you tired of chasing me yet?”

No response. The light flared in her palms, stripping away the hiding places. She pivoted once, then again, her breath trapped in her chest.

“Tired? Not at all.”

She whirled around, tangled strands of hair whipping at her face and shoulders. Absently, she wondered when it had come loose from its bun. 

The apprentice stood grinning at her, one hand wrapped loosely around his wooden staff. His teeth were large, even, and starkly white in the dark forest, lending him a wolfish appearance. 

“I was just enjoying watching you scurry around like a trapped rat,” he continued. “I thought if I let you carry on long enough, you might just drop dead of exhaustion before I even had a go at you.” He chortled. “You even look like a rat, come to think of it. Has anyone ever told you that your ears are freakishly long?”

She stood her ground, staring at him, a hiss building in her throat. She didn’t know his name, or if she’d seen him before, though it was likely that she had. Humans all looked the same after a while, especially when viewed through a haze of magic-induced exhaustion and nausea. 

“Is this the part where I’m supposed to surrender?” she sneered. “Go back to the pens with you like a good little slave?”

He lifted his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “You can surrender if you want. Though that _does_ make it less fun. But no, little rat, you’re not going back to the pens. That was never the object of this exercise.”

Her stomach clenched, but she held her hands steady, refusing to let the violet light tremble in her palms. “And what _is_ the object?”

“It’s a hunt.” His grin turned feral. “And we don’t catch and release. You’re the last one standing, you know. A few of the others fought back a little, but not much. This batch has been somewhat of a disappointment, so I’m hoping you’ll provide more of a challenge.”

She didn’t have a chance to respond before he leveled his staff at her head, white light flickering at the tip. 

She could almost hear the bones in her shoulder grind against each other as she threw herself into a roll, the ground cold and hard with early frosts. Her arms shot out, fire bursting from her fingertips as momentum carried her upright. He dodged the blast easily, the flames’ light glinting off his teeth.

“Well, that’s a start,” he laughed. “Come on, little rat. Show me what else you have.”

Time went into a tailspin, stretching and blurring as Aurea twisted and dodged, attacked and retreated, fighting with all the strength she could find. The apprentice pressed forward, weaving spells in an effortless rhythm, that infuriating _grin_ never leaving his face. 

_He’s toying with me_ , she thought, the words a snarl inside her head. _He has been this entire time._

She was panting, her head swimming, her arms and legs as heavy as stone. One of his attacks had gashed her forehead, leaving sweat and blood matting her bangs and dripping down her face. Her vision went blurry, obscured by a red haze, and she wasn’t sure whether it was the blood or her own fury—or both.

She didn’t see the attack coming until it knocked her off her feet, sending her sprawling backwards in a tangle of knees and elbows, a fine spray of her blood misting the nearby trees. Her stomach heaved and her head screamed in protest, but she ignored them both, struggling to her hands and knees as the apprentice’s booted feet stopped in front of her. 

“You poor thing,” he cooed, the words a singsong mockery. “You really thought you could beat me, didn’t you?”

Aurea pushed herself back until she teetered on the balls of her feet, fighting to keep her balance, and lifted her head to stare him in the eye. His grin had transformed into a triumphant sneer.

“ _Didn’t_ you?” he repeated. He reached out one hand as though to seize her hair, but thought better of it, curling his lip at the sight of the bloody tangles. “Answer me, slave.”

Aurea heard her voice come out in a growl, mingling with her labored breaths. “No one is invincible.” 

“That may be.” The apprentice flicked his fingers in a dismissive gesture. “But someday soon, I’ll be a magister of the Imperium. I’m the closest thing to invincible—the closest thing to a _god_ that your pathetic eyes have ever beheld. And you? Do you even realize that this was your sole purpose in life? This, this moment right here, is the whole reason you were born: to be fodder to hone my skills. You should feel blessed. You should be _thanking_ me for making your wretched existence actually count for something, even if only in its final moments.”

She closed her eyes, and the words faded away. Her hands drooped at her sides, and she rested them on the ground, fingers splayed in the dirt. 

The roots began to stir, creating tiny tremors against her palms. 

“Broken at last?” The apprentice’s voice was smug. He pressed the tip of the staff under her chin, forcing her head up, the carved prongs digging into her throat.

She stared up at him, letting the hate gleam in her eyes, her teeth clenched in mingled anger and concentration. Under her hands, the tremors turned to a steady rumble, and the trees’ leaves began to shake like the bells on a magister’s dress. 

For the first time, the apprentice’s sneer melted into a frown.

“What—”

Roots sprang from the earth like tentacles, wrapping around him and digging in hard, turning his question to a choked gargle. His mouth dropped open, eyes bugging almost comically. 

“Wha—” he tried again. “Is this—are _you_ doing this?”

Aurea staggered to her feet, clenching her fists. The roots responded to her command, tightening by inches, drawing a high-pitched wheeze from their prey. 

“Even rats can kill,” she said. Her voice ground against her throat.

Her hands shot out, fire glowing on her fingers. The apprentice’s throat bobbed, his eyes widening, lips beginning to move. 

His screams were almost deafening in the quiet forest, drowning out the insects’ calls and the rustling leaves. Aurea kept her arms outstretched, fire blazing from her hands even as she felt her last reserves of energy start to drain. Her fingers began to shake, sweat beading on her forehead. 

She didn’t know how much time passed before she realized she could no longer hear the screams. A haze obscured her vision, and she blinked, unsure whether the smoke or her own exhaustion was to blame. She backed up one step, then another, sucking in deep breaths to clear her head. It didn’t help. The air was acrid, thick with the stench of billowing smoke and charred flesh, stinging her eyes and leaving her throat raw. 

All at once, it seemed somehow familiar—the fire, the forest, the very human screams—but she was too tired, and the memory was as elusive as ever. She stumbled away, unsure of her direction or her destination. Just putting one foot in front of the other was enough for now.

When the overseer’s men came for her, she reached out to the trees again, but her energy was spent and the guards’ numbers too great. She fought with teeth and nails instead of magic, thrashing and kicking until they forced a sack over her head and her hands behind her back. 

“Move,” a guttural voice ordered, and she fought down a hiss of pain when sharp metal jabbed her shin. The burlap sack was harsh against her face, clogging her nostrils when she tried to breathe, and the restraints on her wrists already slick with blood. 

“Why should I?” she said, challenging, pitching her voice to be heard through the cloth. “Why not just kill me here and leave me to rot in the forest?”

She could make out muffled cursing before a fist slammed into the side of her head. The world tilted and spun, and she braced herself for the fall. 

“Just carry her,” another voice ordered. “We haven’t got all night.”

Aurea felt her feet leave the ground, rough hands tossing her over an armored shoulder, her stomach lurching as though in freefall. She clenched her fists, staring ahead into nothingness, and let the bitterness of finality burn at the back of her throat.


	5. Chapter 5

When they finally pulled the sack off her head, the first thing she registered was the scent hanging on the air.

She breathed in deep, almost gagging, spitting out stray burlap fibers. The room continued to spin, and she closed her eyes, waiting for her body to remember the difference between up and down. The guards shuffled behind her, and a door creaked as it closed. She ignored the sounds, keeping her spine straight and her head raised. 

The scent was sharp and almost spicy, curling in the atmosphere like smoke from a flickering candle. For a moment she stilled, remembering the smell of leather in the armory and the memory it had triggered—

_Callused hands stroking her skin—a deep voice murmuring in her ear—_

She swallowed, letting her clenched fingers slowly relax. For a moment, she was tempted to forget reality and lose herself in the memory, to grasp onto what little contentment she could find as she marched to her execution. 

But a spark of stubbornness flared in the back of her mind, and she opened her eyes, letting the faceless human and his wandering hands evaporate like mist. 

_They haven’t managed to kill me yet,_ she thought. _I won’t make it easy on them now._

Her entire body ached, and the pain flared in her joints as she took a step forward, her eyes scanning the room. It was too dark to make out many details, with two small torches on opposite walls providing the only illumination. She glimpsed the outline of an open window on the far side, its gauzy curtains fluttering with the occasional breeze. A simple oak table occupied the center of the room, its surface covered with scattered books and half-unrolled scrolls. 

She took another step, brows furrowing. Goosebumps swept up and down her arms, prickling almost painfully, and her gaze darted from one shadowed corner to the next, and back again—

“Come closer, girl.” The words pierced the darkness in an unhurried drawl, the voice throaty and rich. In the corner closest to the window, the shadows moved and took shape, two pale points of light appearing as a spell flickered to life. “I didn’t take you for the cautious type.”

The light blurred, and a jet of fire arched across the room, lighting a third torch, then a fourth. Aurea blinked, letting her eyes adjust to the sudden burst of illumination. 

The other mage strode forward, the fire disappearing in her hands. She was a human, tall and stately, and the coiled strength in her movements reminded Aurea of a cat sizing up its prey. Auburn hair threaded with silver fell neatly to her shoulders, and sharp pale eyes glittered in a face just beginning to show signs of age. 

“Do you know who I am?” she asked. Her eyes pierced through Aurea’s, as though she could see into her thoughts and beyond.

Aurea raised her chin. 

“If you expect me to call you ‘mistress,’ you should think again,” she spat.

The magister laughed, so low that Aurea barely heard her. “Small wonder that sharp tongue of yours hasn’t gotten you killed yet. My overseer doesn’t suffer defiance lightly, as I’m sure you know.”

“That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” Aurea balled her fists by her sides, her eyes flashing like the torches. “After what I did to your apprentice, you want to kill me yourself, instead of leaving it to your thugs?”

“Oh, my dear girl.” The magister looked at her with a mixture of amusement and contempt. “I’m afraid I have more important tasks occupying my time than dirtying my hands with the blood of rebellious slaves. You’re here because you have presented me with an opportunity.”

Aurea tensed. “What opportunity?”

The magister turned, striding alongside the table at a leisurely pace, letting her fingers brush its edge. A long moment passed before she spoke. 

“My apprentices have been carrying out those hunts for years,” she said. “I typically take little notice of them. They’re not a training exercise. They’re merely for…sport.”

Aurea snorted. “I take it the prey doesn’t usually fight back.”

“Oh, sometimes they do.” The magister skirted the corner of the table, nails scraping lightly over the wood. “But they never win. You’re the first slave to make it through alive.”

She stopped, her fingers drumming a pattern on the table. Her eyes sharpened on Aurea, narrowed to pale slits. “The guards told me what they found in the forest. They said my apprentice’s body was burned beyond recognition.”

“Better than he deserved,” Aurea shot back. 

She expected a blast of magic to the face, or perhaps another beating. Instead, the magister’s painted lips curved up in something almost resembling a smile. 

“Such unrepentant brutality,” she murmured, and for a moment Aurea wondered if she was talking to herself. “By now you’ve learned the necessity of such things, haven’t you? You’ll do whatever it takes to survive.”

She didn’t wait for an answer, continuing her circuit around the table. “But there was more to your escapades in the woods, wasn’t there? The apprentice wasn’t just burned, he was… _trapped_. Tangled up in tree roots, as though they had simply reached up out of the earth and snared him like a rabbit. The hunter becoming the hunted.” Her lips spread again, and this time the expression was downright predatory. “That was clever of you. Very intriguing.”

Aurea opened her mouth, then closed it again. Uncertainty prickled at the back of her neck, and she fidgeted, almost wishing the other woman would stop talking and just attack her. Violence was expected, familiar, straightforward. Words were a subtler, more dangerous breed of weapon. 

“Are you saying you _approve_ of the fact that I killed him?” she asked, letting skepticism color her tone.

The magister waved her hand, as though swatting away a fly. “I have many apprentices. I like to keep the number high precisely because of incidents such as this. One goes through many substandard prospects before finding the one or two that are truly worthy. Which brings me back to the opportunity I mentioned.”

She lowered herself into a chair and leaned her elbows on the table, tapping her fingertips together. “When one apprentice dies, I replace him or her with another. You’ve created this latest vacancy. It seems only appropriate that you be the one to fill it.”

Silence fell, broken only by the rhythmic clacking of the magister’s nails against the table. Aurea stared at her, searching for the sneer, the cruel glint in her eyes, any sign that this was just another one of their games. 

“Do you take me for a complete fool?” she finally burst out, her voice tight with indignant fury. “I know full well that you would never take a _slave_ as an apprentice.”

“Normally, you would be right.” The magister leaned back in her chair, raising a sculpted eyebrow. “Most slaves, even those with magical ability, are lower than the dirt they stand on. But there are exceptions to every rule. Do you know the most important quality that makes an apprentice successful?”

Aurea curled her lip, eyes glittering. “Sadistic cruelty?”

The magister chuckled. “We prefer to think of it as ‘tenacity.’ With as many apprentices as I have, there’s little room for mediocrity. Only those who separate themselves from the crowd will advance. Sometimes ruthlessness is necessary—something you will learn quickly. But that’s one reason I think you might make for an adequate replacement. You’ve been here for quite a few years now, haven’t you?”

“I…suppose.” An odd pang struck at the center of her chest. She pushed it away, focusing on the burning anger instead. “It’s difficult to keep track of time in a slave pen.”

“As I’m sure you’ve seen,” the magister said, “much of my stock doesn’t last longer than a few months, maybe a year or two at most. They’re weak, physically and mentally. They lack the fortitude to endure. But you’ve not only survived all this time, you’ve kept your strength—strength enough to murder one of my apprentices without flinching.” Her gaze turned appraising, raking Aurea up and down. “You weren’t always a slave, were you?”

Aurea’s bare toes curled against the floor. The fragmented memories lingered in her mind, drifting like mist on a cold morning. _A pale girl running through a dark tunnel…a lover’s fingers trailing along her spine…_

“No,” she said. “I wasn’t.”

“I thought as much.” The magister’s eyes were keen. “You had to learn that magic somewhere, after all. Which was the other thing that caught my attention. Controlling nature like you did—that’s a power one doesn’t encounter very often, and certainly not in the masses of students our Circles turn out. If you can bend trees to your will, what else can you do? It’s an intriguing prospect. Very intriguing indeed. And I’ve been in this position far too long to ignore opportunities like this when they present themselves.”

She rose, tilting her head to one side. “Of course, there’s more to being an apprentice—and certainly more to being a magister—than simply having extraordinary magical talent. We’re the ones who rule. We make decisions that affect countless lives. We have more power at our disposal than most poor fools will ever dream about. It takes intelligence and shrewdness to seize that power, and to wield it successfully. Whether or not you possess _those_ qualities remains to be seen. But in the end, politics is a game like any other. Any apprentice who can learn to play the game, learn how to bend the rules to her advantage, can become very influential indeed.”

Her lips stretched in a smile, showing off all her teeth. “And I am a very good teacher.”

Aurea felt her face tighten. A distant grinding sound reached her ears, and she realized her teeth were clenched as hard as her fists. 

“You and your apprentices have spent years torturing us,” she snarled. “Testing us. Experimenting on us. Bleeding us dry, using us like we’re animals. Do you expect me to just— _forgive_ all of that?” Her voice rose, and distantly she realized her nails were carving crescents into her palms. “What makes you think I won’t just try to kill you?”

“You can try,” the magister said. She sounded completely unthreatened. “You certainly wouldn’t be the first apprentice to have designs on my life. But you have a particularly useful quality that will prevent you from doing so.”

Aurea frowned. “ _What_ quality?”

“The will to live.” The magister’s eyes were calculating, and the hint of a smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. “You’re a little reckless, I gather, and you have a sharp temper and a sharper tongue. But you’re not stupid. Deep down, you know you don’t yet have the power to best me, and to even try would be certain death. And I think that you very much want to stay alive, even if you don’t know why. You keep fighting and pressing on, because it’s all you know how to do. It’s what you’ve been doing all your life, I would wager.”

“Don’t—“ Aurea almost choked on the word, her throat tightening with barely controlled fury. “Don’t talk about me like you _know_ me.”

“Reading people and assessing their motivations is what I do, girl,” the magister said. “It’s what has made me successful in the political realm, even more than my magic. And it’s a skill honed through much practice—one I can teach you, if you accept the offer.”

Aurea bit down hard on her lower lip, arms crossed tight over her chest.

“And if I refuse?” she asked, her voice sharp and soft.

“Well.” The magister’s smile didn’t falter, but somehow it seemed to grow brittle. “I can’t exactly have a slave running around who’s powerful enough to kill apprentices. If you say no…” Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “My guards will take care of the rest.”

The room was spinning, and Aurea closed her eyes, reaching up to massage her aching temples. Her fingers pressed in hard, leaving little rows of white marks on her skin. She thought of that day in the armory, remembering Akanthe’s hand gripped hard around hers, her eyes burning as fierce and bright as her words. _Don’t give up, no matter how brutal it gets._

She looked at the magister, locking eyes for a long, long moment, sharp green on pale blue. _I’ll survive, no matter what._

She let out a deep, hissing breath.

“I’ll do it,” she said, her voice clipped. “I’ll be your apprentice. But I won’t have anything to do with slaves. No experiments or tests or _hunts_. Ever. Also, you have a slave named Akanthe. I want her set free—her and her son, Rayl. Not just dumped out on the streets, either. I want her to have a job and a house and more food than she can eat.”

Her shoulders tensed as she waited for a scoffing sneer, or a demand to know who she thought she was, how a _slave_ could think she had any business making demands of a _magister_ —

Almost belatedly, she realized the other woman had merely smiled. 

“I think that can be arranged,” she said. Her voice was almost a purr. “If it’s that important to you.”

She walked out from behind the table, and Aurea bristled, resisting the urge to back up a step.

“The guards will take you from here to your new chambers,” the magister said. A gleam of amusement flickered in her eyes. “I assume you don’t have any belongings you’d like to collect from your previous accommodations?” 

Aurea ignored the question, her mind racing as fast as the elven girl that always eluded her in her dreams. “Just answer one thing,” she said.

The magister paused. “Hmm?”

“How do I know this is even genuine?” Aurea said. “What reason do I have to believe it isn’t just another one of your twisted games?”

“Ah, you’re suspicious.” The magister all but beamed at her. “Very good. Hold on to that; it will serve you well in the days to come. As to your question…” She smirked. “What reason do I have to lie?”

The door opened, and Aurea whirled to face it, squinting at the guards silhouetted against the sudden rush of light. She stood tense and wary as they approached, the same faceless brutes who had wielded fists and cudgels so dispassionately over the years. 

This time they stopped a respectable distance away from her, and the one in the lead bowed from the waist. 

“Right this way, my lady,” he said.

Her feet moved slowly, almost without her permission, turning to follow the guards down the hallway. When she reached the door’s threshold she paused, turning to look back into the darkened room.

The magister was already gone from view, vanished back into the shadows like the remnants of an old, forgotten life.


	6. Chapter 6

_Dear Aurea,_

_Hello. I hope that you are doing well. I must admit I don’t really know how to begin this letter. I’ve never written a letter before! Well, actually, I’m not writing this one myself, either. My new mistress has been very kind, kind enough to begin teaching me how to read and write, but it’s quite difficult. All the shapes and squiggles look so strange to me! Rayl has been taking to it much better than I have. The mistress—the new mistress, that is—takes a little bit out of my wages each month, and in exchange she allows Rayl to sit in on some of the sessions with her own children’s tutor. Isn’t that kind of her?_

_I wanted to tell you that I am sorry for being short with you the last time we saw each other. In truth I still don’t quite know what to say. Oh, of course I know that you’re not cruel like them, and that you most likely didn’t really have a choice at all. And perhaps you can even do some good, something to help the poor souls still living in that pen, never knowing when they might be called next. But even knowing all of that, it’s still very hard and very strange to think of you as…one of them. It all just happened so suddenly, didn’t it?_

_But still, I also wanted to thank you for helping me and Rayl. I’m still not quite sure how you did it—except I suppose you can have anything you want now, can’t you? Anyway, we’re doing very well here. I mostly help to keep the house clean and attend the mistress when she needs me. It’s a lot of work, but not too much, and the mistress says I do well at it. Oh, and it’s so very strange having money of my own! At first I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, until the mistress said I could spend it on whatever I wanted. Isn’t that incredible?_

_Well, I suppose I should stop now before I ramble more than I already have, so that the girl writing this down for me doesn’t become angry! Again, I hope you’re doing well, Aurea. Perhaps we’ll see each other again someday?_

_Goodbye until then,_

_Akanthe_

* * *

It was an entirely new world, and yet in some ways it was all the same. 

She stopped dead in her tracks the first time she saw her new apartments, large and sumptuous, the very antithesis of Akanthe’s tiny squalid hut. The astonishment gave way to white-hot anger when she discovered the quarters came with their own complement of household slaves, a timid group who greeted her with downcast eyes and submissive murmurs, even though her clothing was shabbier than theirs and her body marred with scars and bruises. 

“My dear, you’re an apprentice now,” the magister reminded her when she erupted in vehement fury at the notion of owning slaves. “You may do whatever you like with them. Give them away, free them, keep them as paid servants, drop them into the Fade and send them on a journey to the Black City. It makes no difference to anyone but you.”

_And them_ , she thought. Even keeping servants seemed somehow _wrong_ , yet she was well aware that they knew little else, and to free them and set them on their way might cause them more harm than good. 

_I’ll keep them here_ , she decided, trying to push away the twinges of disquiet. _But I’ll make them the best-treated, best-paid servants in the whole Imperium._

As time passed, the dilemma of whether or not to employ servants became the least of her problems. 

She was a slave no longer, but the callings continued—only now, her judge was a magister instead of an overseer. The training was long and dangerous and dirty, and the arena a tangled web of politics, secrets and lies that she could never have envisioned back in the pen, when all she could do was shiver on a bed of rags and carve notches into walls.

A year passed, and then another. Her magic grew and her power with it, and as her brash demeanor and anti-slavery stance grew in notoriety, her enemies multiplied like the weeds that sprouted in the city’s slums. 

The first assassination attempt came as a rude awakening. The second time she caught the culprit in the act, and sent his body back to his employers in warning. 

_I’ll survive_ , she thought grimly as her most devoted servants disappeared with the corpse in tow. _No matter what._

She trained and schemed and planned, freeing slaves and laying foundations, bending the rules and creating new ones. And as her new life sped on with no signs of slowing down, she felt the last snatches of the old one start to slip away. The strange nightmares of dark whispers and darker tunnels began to fade, and the human…

Sometimes she thought of him still, remembering his gentle callused touch and his scent of leather and pine and sex, and in moments of solitude she would try to picture his face even though she knew it was fruitless. But the memory grew dim with the passage of time, and in the back of her mind she began to wonder if he had ever existed at all, or if he was simply a phantom her subconscious had created to help sustain her in her darkest hours.

_The will to live, nothing more_ , she thought with a wry twist of her lips, looking out her tower’s window, eyes searching the city sky for stars she knew she wouldn’t find. _The ‘mistress’ was right all along._

* * *

The forest, for reasons unknown, felt like the only place where she could truly let down her guard.

It was foolish, she knew. An enemy could strike anywhere, and the woods provided a multitude of hiding places where an assassin might lurk. Yet something about the forest was familiar, even comforting, softening the hard edges of her mind.

It felt something like home. 

The earth was cool between her bare toes, and she risked a moment of vulnerability, letting her eyes slide shut as she tilted her face upward. The sun was just beginning to sink behind the horizon, and its dappled rays filtered through the trees to play on her tired skin.

It had been almost a week since her last walk in the woods. _Too long_ , she thought, her mental voice weary, eyes still closed. She spread her hands, reaching out for the roots, and felt them respond, stirring underground like an extension of her hands.

She smiled.

A distant voice reached her ears, the words low and unintelligible, carried on the wind. 

She froze in place, the smile disappearing, and all traces of fatigue vanished along with it. The trees’ roots hung suspended beneath the earth, coiled and tensed like snakes ready to strike. 

The voice grew louder as she stepped toward it, and a second joined it, though the words were still too low for her to hear. Ahead of her the trees gave way to a small clearing, and she hung back, concealed in the twining branches. 

A small fire burned in the center of the clearing, barely visible from her vantage point. A figure emerged from the woods as she watched, his arms full of kindling, and the fire grew brighter as he fed the pieces into the flames. 

Aurea crept closer, batting her hand against the faint sting of smoke that lingered even at this distance from the campfire. It was difficult to make out details through the thickly clustered trees, and she squinted, shifting forward several inches and craning her head around the branches jutting out from a nearby shrub.

Whoever they were, they traveled light. Several knapsacks lay next to unfolded bedrolls, with various weapons and armor pieces resting nearby. The fire’s light illuminated flashes of blue and silver on the cuirass closest to her, but failed to reveal any identifying insignia. She could see little food other than a small loaf of bread and a wheel of cheese sitting a short distance from the fire, waiting to be eaten. Her eyes followed a lone fly as it braved the smoke to land on the cheese, and she wrinkled her nose. 

The wind shifted, carrying the smoke away from her, and she chanced a short sigh of relief. In its place, she could hear snatches of muted conversation from the far side of the camp, though the participants were little more than darkened silhouettes against the fading sunlight. 

The discussion lasted only a few moments before it ended, and one of the figures stepped into view, the flames’ light falling on his face. He was tall, human, and utterly unremarkable. Aurea pressed her lips together and took a careful step backward, tilting her head to watch the other figure leave the campsite and disappear into the nearby brush.

She raised an eyebrow, waiting several beats before turning to follow.

It was another human man, she was fairly certain—he was too tall and muscular to be an elf, although his skills in remaining hidden were impressive enough to make her wonder. He seemed to fade in and out of sight at intervals, leaving no tracks, using each tree and bit of foliage to his advantage. At length he stopped, freezing in place among a patch of dying leaves that still clung to their branch, the faded brown color an almost uncanny match to his tunic. He reached slowly behind him to grasp the bow strapped to his back.

Aurea held her breath, crouching, and looked past him. A young deer stood a stone’s throw away, nibbling at the few sprouts of green grass still untouched by the early autumn frosts.

The bow moved easily in the human’s hands, held steady as he reached back to draw an arrow from his quiver. Aurea knew little of archery, but the human’s smooth, practiced motions left little doubt that he knew exactly what to do with the weapon. 

The deer went down almost without warning, and Aurea’s breath caught in her throat in spite of herself. The arrow’s flight had come so quickly she hadn’t even seen the human’s fingers twitch. He stood, lowering the bow, and strode toward his fallen target.

He hadn’t made it more than two steps before he whipped around, a new arrow materializing out of nowhere, its point aimed directly at her hiding place.

“Identify yourself,” he growled. His voice was gravelly, ominous, and suddenly very close, leaving her no time to wonder how or when he’d sensed her presence. 

A bolt of adrenaline shot down her spine, propelling her up and forward as her fist flew up toward the human’s face, a burst of flame dancing on her fingertips. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in an involuntary snarl, and her voice cracked the air like a whip.

“Don’t even think about it, human,” she spat. He was easily a head taller than her and a hundred pounds heavier, but she felt no fear. Her magic was as quick and deadly as any arrow. She tensed, her eyes trained on him, waiting for his next move.

She was unprepared to see all the blood drain from his face, lending him an almost ghostly appearance in the flickering light. The bow wavered in his hands, the strings trembling, and the arrow swayed from its mark before he slowly lowered it to the ground.

He took a hesitant step forward, then another, his jaw slack and his eyes wide, gaze riveted to her as though he feared she would disappear if he blinked.

“Velanna?”

The word was barely more than a whisper, his voice thick with disbelief. Aurea frowned, finding it difficult to hear over the sudden thundering in her ears. 

“I don’t—” she began, but the wind swallowed up the words as it changed direction once more, blowing her hair back from her face. She drew a deep breath, hoping to still her racing heart, and caught traces of leather and pine on the breeze. 

The fire stuttered beside her, and she realized her fingers were shaking. She balled her fists, extinguishing the flame, and took a step toward the human. The ground was unsteady beneath her feet as she looked up at him, meeting his eyes.

“Let me see your hands,” she said.

He seemed almost in a daze as he moved, replacing his bow across his back and stripping his gloves off one after the other. He stretched his hands toward her wordlessly, his eyes never leaving her face.

She didn’t miss the hitch in his breathing when their fingers connected. His skin was warm to her touch, his strong fingers dwarfing her own as she turned his hands over in her palms. The gathering dusk left just enough light for her to make out the thick calluses on his fingers, roughened from years of archery. She let her eyes slip closed as she imagined— _remembered_ the sensations they had raised as they trailed over her skin, leaving tiny goosebumps in their wake.

“You’re him,” she said, opening her eyes. Her voice was high and tremulous, but somehow she couldn’t make it come back down. “You’re him, aren’t you?”

He stared at her, his throat working as he swallowed hard, his breaths coming fast and uneven. “You don’t remember me.”

“Just—flashes.” Her heart collided with her ribs like a drum, making the words come out in a stumbling staccato. “Scents, touches. I don’t—I can’t—”

The old phantom pain stabbed at her skull, sharp enough to raise tiny sparks at the corners of her eyes. She released the human’s hands and stumbled backward, reaching up to rub at her temples. 

“Wait—Velanna, wait.” He reached toward her, shaking off his daze like a man waking up from a long, dreamless slumber. “What happened to you? Have you been here in Tevinter all this time? What do you remember?”

“My name is _Aurea_.” She forced her hands to her sides, fists balling, nails biting into her palms. Her spine straightened, her chin rose and her eyes flashed cold and hard as an ice spell. “I am a magister’s apprentice. If you wanted… _Velanna_ , you should have come years ago.”

She bit off the words, spitting them out like poison, but the bitterness flooded her throat anyway. The unspoken accusation hung in the air, and the human brought his hand to his face, pressing his knuckles briefly against his mouth.

“We searched for you,” he finally said. His voice was hoarse, scratchy. Broken. “ _I_ searched for you. Even long after the others—”

He cut himself off, looking away. She watched his jaw clench, the shadows gathering in the hollows of his cheeks. 

“We didn’t know where to look,” he went on. “We scoured every inch of the Deep Roads where you disappeared. We branched out, sent search parties through miles and miles of tunnels. We went to every nearby city, every village, every forest. We even sought out the nearest Dalish tribe to see if you’d contacted them. But we found nothing. It was as though someone had torn a hole in the Veil and yanked you through it.”

Aurea pressed her lips together, wrapping her arms tight around her waist. “After a while, I decided no one had come for me because there was no one. The few flashes I could remember—I thought my mind had just invented them, as something to hold onto. It was easier to think that than to imagine that everyone I’d known had abandoned me.”

He was already shaking his head as she spoke. “No, never. I realize you—you have no reason to trust me, but if you believe anything I’ve said, believe that we—I—never abandoned you. If we’d known you were still alive…”

He drew a deep breath, controlling his voice with an effort. “It was almost two years before they officially stopped searching. _‘If she were still alive, she would have returned by now,’_ they told me. _‘Either that, or she doesn’t want to be found.’”_

His eyes were dark as he spoke, and he made a harsh sound deep in his throat. “They held a memorial service for you,” he said. “Planted a sapling in your name in the Keep’s courtyard.”

“’They?’” she echoed. 

“The Grey Wardens,” he said. “We joined at about the same time, you and I.”

She gnawed at her lower lip, filing that information away. “And you?” she asked. Suddenly it seemed as though the forest had gone silent, making her voice unusually loud, grating against her ears. “I don’t know—I don’t remember your name.”

She thought she saw a brief spasm cross his face, but it was difficult to tell in the dying light. “Nathaniel,” he murmured. His fingers clenched and unclenched by his sides.

The name rolled over in her head, and she held her breath, unsure whether or not she hoped for it to trigger a flood of memories. 

“And we were…” She swallowed, licked her lips. “Lovers.”

He nodded. His hand twitched again, and with a jolt she realized it was likely taking all his willpower to keep from sweeping her up in his arms.

“I’ve missed you,” he said. The words tumbled out in a raw whisper. “I can’t believe you’ve been here all this time. I still have some of your belongings in our room, back at the Keep. I tried to move forward, to concentrate on nothing but duty, but some part of me never stopped thinking that perhaps one day…” 

He trailed off, the rest of the sentence fading like the last snatches of a dream. She took a small step forward, tilting her head up to search his face. 

“I’m not her anymore,” she said. “You know as little about me as I do about you. You have no idea what my life has been since—since I last saw you. I had to make something new for myself.”

“A magister in training.” He shook his head, a wan smile crossing his face. “Somehow I’m not surprised. You’ve always been nothing if not tenacious. But—” 

He reached out, slowly, a question in his eyes. She hesitated only a moment before giving a tiny nod.

Her eyes drifted closed as his fingers curled against her cheek, his thumb skimming the corner of her mouth, tracing the line of her lower lip. Unconsciously she leaned into the contact, and heard his unsteady exhalation.

“You said you remembered flashes,” he whispered. His fingers trailed down to her jawline, his thumb following the familiar path of the tattoo on her chin. “The rest of the memories must still be in there. Somewhere.”

She opened her eyes. He was close, now, and she wasn’t sure whether to step forward or backward. 

“Some of the most powerful magic in the world is practiced here,” he went on. He let his hand fall from her face, reluctantly. “Did you or anyone else ever try to use it to recover your memories?”

One reply after another leapt to her tongue all at once. 

_No, because slaves with amnesia aren’t exactly at the top of a magister’s priority list—_

_No, because once I became an apprentice myself I wasn’t sure if it mattered anymore—_

_No, because even though I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I was afraid of what I might remember, afraid that it might ruin everything I’m trying to build now—_

Dimly she was aware that the silence had stretched a little too long, and she pushed the tangled mess of thoughts away. “No,” she said.

The human gave her a long, measured look. His eyes were shadowed, lips pressed together.

“Do you _want_ to remember?” he finally asked. His voice was soft, laced with tension, as though he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear her answer.

“I don’t know.” Suddenly her head was spinning, fatigue swallowing her up like a swarm of locusts descending on a field. His face swam in her vision, and she blinked furiously, reaching out to swat at the empty air. 

“I never expected this,” she went on, her voice rising, tightening. “I stopped even _hoping_ for it, years ago. I accepted that whatever had been was gone for good and that no idiotic wishes on stars or prayers to nameless gods would bring it back. And now— _now_ all of a sudden you show up and throw everything into confusion.” The words ground to a halt as the forest swayed around her, the trees tilting at dangerous angles. She raised both hands to her head, digging her fingers into her temples and pretending not to see his hand hovering near her elbow.

She backed up several steps, tipping her head toward the sky and drawing a deep breath. His scent of leather and wood and freshly oiled armor lingered on the wind, and she breathed in again and again until it blended in with the familiar forest air.

“I need time to think,” she said. “Alone. I need to—get away.” She waved a hand. “From all this.”

Something flashed in the human’s eyes, and he drew a sharp breath. “Velanna—”

She opened her mouth to correct him, but somehow the words wouldn’t come. “Do you plan to stop me?” she shot back instead. Her arms went rigid, the muscles in her neck tying themselves into knots. A tiny spark of flame leapt from one fingertip to another. 

He forced himself to relax with a visible effort, his shoulders loosening and his fingers unclenching. 

“No,” he said quietly, and one corner of his mouth twitched up. “I doubt that I could even if I wanted to. But…”

He stopped and scrubbed a hand over his face, his expression mingled frustration and yearning. “Please…don’t disappear again. To discover you’re alive after all this time, only to lose you again…”

“Then find me.” She raised both hands, palms facing skyward, her gaze fixed on him as the familiar rush of magic began to swirl around her. “This time you’ll know where to look.”

The ground disappeared under her feet as tree roots sprang up around her, erasing him from her view.


	7. Chapter 7

Her tower’s stone walls were oppressive, confining, doing little to calm her racing mind. She drew a bath, but the hot water and thick steam only agitated her further, and she soaked for only a few moments before jumping up and pacing her chambers in little more than a towel. Her servants hovered near the doorway, twisting their fingers together and shooting uncertain glances at one another. Sometimes it seemed that no matter how often she reassured them, they took every sign of disquiet as the herald of an imminent beating.

Not that she could blame them. She understood the feeling all too well.

Finally one of the bolder ones stepped forward, carefully avoiding the wet patches on the floor. “M’lady, is everything all right?” she ventured.

One step. Two steps. Three steps. Turn. One step. Two steps. Three steps. Turn.

_Rough gentle fingers tracing a path along her spine—_

_“It was as though someone had torn a hole in the Veil and yanked you through it—”_

“M’lady?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, then winced at her tone’s razor-sharp edge. “I’m fine,” she tried again, softening the words. “You don’t need to worry. Everything is all right.”

The attendant took another cautious step toward her. “You’re dripping, m’lady. Do you want me to wipe the floor so that you don’t slip?”

Aurea glanced down at the puddles forming underfoot. Her sodden hair clung to her neck, and she gave it an irritable push. “No, that’s fine,” she said. “I’d rather just be alone for now. Take the rest of the night off, all of you.”

She waved a hand at the door, and the servants milled about uneasily for a moment before filing out, their murmured farewells lingering behind them. Aurea released a deep breath and pressed her fingers against her eyelids. A breeze drifted through the open window, raising goosebumps on her damp skin, and she shivered. 

_A Grey Warden_. Her pacing resumed, hands rubbing absently up and down her bare arms. Her knowledge of the order didn’t stretch far beyond the basic facts—Wardens were secretive, existed primarily to combat darkspawn, and occasionally conscripted recruits who were unwilling to join. Over the years she had heard snatches of conversation about the Wardens who had quashed the Fifth Blight before it truly began, but she had paid them little mind. Far-off events in backwater Ferelden held no relevance to her—or so she had believed.

_How long was I a Warden? Could I have been involved in stopping that Blight, somehow? What would ever have possessed me to join such an order? Or is it possible that I was conscripted?_

The questions circled in her mind like vultures, but she found no answers. Hours passed before she crawled into bed, pulling the covers up over her head and pressing her face into the pillow. Her thoughts blurred and fragmented, mixing into muddled nonsense, finally fading altogether as sleep caught up with her.

She dreamed of running through endless tunnels, echoing human voices calling after her, her breath burning in her lungs as the darkness swallowed her up.

* * *

The next day passed in a blur, meetings and parties and training sessions unfolding before her in a strange detached state, as though she were observing someone else living the life she’d built for herself. The night brought little relief, leaving her tossing and turning as she alternated between insomnia and nightmares, jolting awake to twisted sheets and labored breaths.

In the morning she canceled her engagements and retreated to her gardens, pushing the pesky thoughts out of her mind, focusing on the wind rustling the leaves and the birds chirping overhead. The sky was cloudless, and she tilted her face into the sunshine, closing her eyes and letting warmth and drowsiness steal over her.

A delicate cough roused her, and she shook herself alert, blinking over at the servant standing a respectable distance away. 

“Your pardon, m’lady,” the servant said. “You have a visitor. Shall I tell him you don’t wish to be disturbed?”

The corner of her mouth twisted. “That depends on who it is.”

“I’ve never seen him before,” the servant admitted, her eyes darting away. “He said his name was Nathaniel Howe.”

“Is there anyone else with him?”

The servant shook her head. “No, m’lady.”

Aurea nodded, rolling kinks out of her shoulders. “Before you see him in, tell me…what did you think of him?”

The girl froze, her eyes widening in her thin face. She was one of the newer servants, a former slave who still cringed whenever she was addressed and stared at her wages as though she expected them to bite her. “Begging your pardon?”

“Don’t be afraid. I’m not testing you.” Aurea kept her voice low and her expression neutral. She knew well that sometimes smiles terrified even more than snarls. “Just tell me about him. What did he look like?”

“I…” The servant squinted, screwing up her face as she remembered. “Well, he was a human, so he was very…large? He seemed rather handsome, though. In a hard sort of way. Although he had a strange patch of hair between his lip and his chin, like a bug of some kind landed there and he forgot to swat it away.”

Aurea stifled a laugh. “And was he kind to you?”

The girl gave a vigorous nod. “Yes, m’lady. He was very polite.”

“All right.” Aurea nodded, and the servant relaxed visibly. “Send him in.”

She watched as the garden gate swung open and Nathaniel Howe walked through. 

The servant hadn’t been wrong. In the full light of day, the human Warden was quick to draw the eye. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his arms well-muscled from his mastery of the bow. Dark hair brushed his shoulders, and Aurea suddenly found herself wondering if she’d ever run her fingers through it. 

His head swiveled toward her, and his grey eyes warmed as they caught hers.

“My lady,” he greeted her as he approached.

“’My lady?’” she repeated, raising an eyebrow at him. “You sound like one of my staff.”

He smiled, but the expression was tinged with sadness. “I always used to call you that, from the moment I met you. ‘Such a human thing to call someone,’ you said, but you came to rather enjoy it.”

“I see.” She shifted from foot to foot, and Nathaniel’s eyes sharpened on her.

“Forgive me,” he said, voice quiet. “I know you said you…needed time. Does that make you uncomfortable, when I speak of things you don’t remember?”

Aurea took a deep breath.

“No,” she said. “I cannot say I’m not conflicted, but there’s no sense in hiding from the past. I’ve spent too long with the unknown hovering over me like a constant shadow. So I want you to tell me. But first…” She turned, beckoning to a nearby servant. “Would you like something to eat or drink? I find that breakfast often isn’t enough to fill me until midday.”

She was surprised when Nathaniel chuckled, and lost herself in the sound for a moment before pulling her mind back to his words.

“That’s the Warden appetite,” he was saying. “We’re ravenous more often than not.”

“Really?” She tilted her head. “Are there other Warden characteristics I should know about? Certain things I should be doing or not doing? Rituals I should have been performing?”

He shook his head. “Not in particular. Although…do you have nightmares?”

Her eyes widened. “Yes. I’m surrounded by darkness—tunnels of some kind—“

Nathaniel nodded. “The Deep Roads.”

“And I hear voices, endless whispering growling voices closing in around me,” she said. 

“Those are Warden nightmares,” he told her. “We all have them. They typically start as soon as we join the order.”

She huffed out a short breath. “And all this time I thought perhaps I was just slowly losing my mind. Typical that nightmares would be the one thing that stayed with me when everything else disappeared.”

Her gaze strayed to his hands. “Almost everything,” she amended.

She looked back to his face as she heard him swallow. His lips were parted, his eyes darkened.

“Forgive me,” he said again, and looked away. His voice was rough. “I envisioned reuniting with you a thousand times, but I never imagined being a stranger to you. This is…harder than anything I pictured.”

Aurea wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised when she reached out to grab his hand, drawing his eyes back to her. His fingers tightened around hers, his grip just as warm and strong as she remembered.

“That’s why you’re here,” she said. “To remind me.”

The clatter of dishes broke the stillness, and she released his hand as the servants approached, carrying trays heaped high with food and drink. A teapot balanced dangerously close to falling as the servants lowered the tray to the table, and before Aurea could call out a warning, it careened over the edge and smashed against the paved walkway. 

The servant’s panicked yelp was almost as loud as the shattering dish. She dropped to her knees next to the wreckage, scooping jagged pieces into her hands as though if she cleaned up fast enough, perhaps her mistress wouldn’t notice the spreading pool of piping hot liquid. 

“I’m sorry, m’lady,” she babbled. “So, so sorry. It’ll never happen again, I promise you—”

“Shhh.” Aurea approached slowly, crouching next to the girl and laying a comforting hand on her arm. “It’s all right. I’m not angry. Put those shards down—carefully, now.”

The servant looked at her with wide, tearful eyes. “But I need to clean up the mess.”

“You can use a broom for that. Not your fingers. See, you’ve cut yourself.” She took the girl’s hands, letting a current of healing magic close the lacerations. “There. Now go wash up—you’ve got tea all over yourself.”

The servant stuttered out a word of thanks and fled. Aurea shook tea droplets off her hands and turned back to Nathaniel, who stood watching the scene with a thoughtful expression. 

“You _are_ different,” he said.

She arched an eyebrow. “How so?”

“The way you interact with your servants,” he said. “You have a gentleness about you.”

“I…suppose so. Sometimes, anyway.” She pursed her lips, pushing back the memories of the apprentice in the forest and the would-be assassins, the anger and brutal defiance that had kept her alive over the years. “I wasn’t gentle…before?”

Nathaniel gave a wry smile. “Not typically, no.”

Aurea plucked a pastry off the tray and looked down at it, turning it over in her fingers. Suddenly she didn’t feel quite so hungry. “Tell me more,” she said, meeting Nathaniel’s eyes. “What was she…I like?”

“Fiery.” His voice filled with quiet affection as he spoke. “Stubborn. Quick-tempered. Passionate—about anything you set your mind to, but especially your family and your people. And brutally honest. You spoke your mind and never apologized for it.”

“Hmm.” She tilted her head, turning the words over in her mind. “It sounds as though I could be difficult to love.”

“Sometimes.” The corner of his mouth tugged up. “But who isn’t? I used to be nobility, so I grew up surrounded by people who were experts at saying one thing to your face and another behind your back. My own father had that down to an art form. So when I met you, and knew with absolute certainty that you would always tell me what I needed to hear, even if I didn’t _want_ to hear it, it was…refreshing.”

He leaned forward in his chair and rested one hand on the table, his fingers inches away from hers. “More to the point,” he continued, “you had your reasons for being the way you were. Before you joined the Wardens, you…” He paused, measuring his words. “Your life was not an easy one,” he finished. 

She raised her eyes from the space between their fingers, training them on his face. “Go on.”

Instead he hesitated, his eyes hooded with indecision. Finally he sighed, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. 

“It’s strange,” he said. “Sitting here looking at you, knowing that you don’t remember those things, I feel almost…relieved.” 

Her eyebrows shot up. “They’re that terrible?” _Worse than slavery?_

“It isn’t my place to judge that.” For a moment his eyes were far away, lost in a distant memory. “But I know that they caused a lot of turmoil for you, haunted you for a long, long time. Yet at the same time, in a way it was those things that shaped you into the person that you—that you were.”

His voice stumbled on the last word. He cleared his throat. 

“In any event,” he said quietly, “it’s not my decision to make. Whatever you want me to tell you, I will.”

She reached up to the back of her head, rubbing absently at the spot where the wound used to be. The old ache stirred in her arms and legs, remnants of the long hours of tests and trials, hours spent cursing whatever fate had stolen her old life and turned her into Aurea the slave.

“Tell me everything,” she said. 

She met his eyes, and he nodded.

He told her of the life she’d once lived, a life spent moving from place to place, always staying one step ahead of human violence. She learned that she had long ago been an apprentice of a very different type, learning to lead a clan of elves instead of a nation of mages, until her fierce pride and stubborn anger had turned everything to ashes. He told her of the day she had joined the Grey Wardens, and reconstructed images formed in her mind—a chalice filled with monsters’ blood, a drafty human fortress she’d learned to call home, a sister with milky eyes and spider-veined skin. While Nathaniel spoke, his hand moved across the table, fingertips barely touching hers as she silently grieved for a people and a family lost to her long before her memories.

Silence fell over the garden when he finished. He sat watching her, his expression guarded, as though he were waiting—for what, she didn’t know. An explosion, perhaps, or tears, or a sudden flood of memories as everything clicked into place.

She didn’t realize he’d spoken again until she felt his light touch on her hand, drawing her eyes back to him. His mouth moved, forming her name, although whether he’d called her _Velanna_ or _Aurea,_ she couldn’t say. 

“What?” She frowned, trying to pull her mind from its quagmire. “I didn’t hear you.”

“I asked if you were all right. You look pale.” A worried crease formed between his eyebrows, and she felt his thumb brush over her wrist. “I’m sure it must be a lot to take in.”

“I don’t know.” She jumped up from her chair, suddenly restless, and paced a tight circle next to the table. “Some of the things you described—if I concentrate, it almost seems as though I can remember them, but only distantly, like a dream you want to hold onto but forget anyway as soon as you wake up. And even then, I don’t know if I’m truly remembering or if I’m just creating images that I want to believe are memories.”

She stopped, pivoting to face him, stray blond hairs whipping her face. “And you? What are you hoping to gain from all this?”

“What am I ‘hoping to gain?’” His eyebrows arched. “Now you’re sounding more like your old self.”

“Well, you want me to remember, presumably.” She gripped the edge of the table and leaned down so she could look him in the eye. “You do realize that even if I _did_ remember, it wouldn’t suddenly invalidate everything I’ve done here. I have responsibilities. I have _plans_. I have people whose welfare depends on me. Are you hoping I’ll abandon all of that and return to the Wardens with you, and everything will go back to the way it was?”

He took a long breath, and every line in his face deepened, but he didn’t look away. “There’s no easy answer to that question.”

She didn’t budge. “Then give me a hard one.”

Nathaniel stared at her for a moment before his face twisted into an expression of mingled exasperation and affection. Aurea had the sudden feeling that she’d seen that look on his face many times before. 

“Of course I want you to come back with me,” he said, his voice quiet and rough. “I won’t lie and say otherwise. To this day I still wake up every morning and expect to see you standing across the room, getting dressed or tying your hair back. Sometimes at the end of a darkspawn fight, I still look for you to make sure you’re all right before I catch myself and remember that you’re…gone. I’ve missed you more than I can put into words.” 

He sighed. “But believe me, I’m also well aware that life isn’t like the stories my father told me when I was a boy, where all troubles were neatly resolved and everyone lived happily ever after. I know it’s a selfish fool’s hope to think that you might give up everything familiar to go back to a life that you don’t remember—and possibly never will. But whatever choice you make, I’ll respect it.”

She gave him a long, hard look. “You would let Velanna go that easily?”

“Nothing about it would be easy.” She heard his gauntlets creak as his fingers clenched beneath the table. “But I learned long ago that there’s no dissuading you once your mind is made up. Besides, if you were to return with me, I would want you to make the decision freely. Which reminds me—I have something for you.” 

He reached into his pack and pulled out a book, its cover decorated with a gracefully stylized embossing of a tree. The leather binding was clean and well-kept but beginning to show signs of wear, and the visible page edges were discolored from years of use. 

“The Warden-Commander gave this to you, years ago,” Nathaniel said. “At the time that you disappeared, you had nearly filled it. I believe there are only a few blank pages left.”

Aurea took it from him, running one finger carefully over the tree’s edges. “So this was my journal?”

“Partly, yes.” His eyes lingered on the book, but his expression was distant. “You kept it with you almost all the time, and wrote in it often. But it was more than just a journal: you also used it to record stories for your people. Your goal was to return it to the Dalish once it was full. That’s why I carry it with me whenever I go on missions, so that I have it at hand if we should happen to come across any Dalish clans.” His mouth took on a wry twist. “Though I always had my doubts that they would accept such a thing from a human. But I wanted to at least try.”

Aurea let the book fall open to a random page, her fingers gently skimming the yellowed parchment. Her throat tightened as she recognized the neat, no-nonsense handwriting as her own. 

“Have you read it?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Truly?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Your lover vanishes without a trace, leaving behind her journal, and you keep it with you for years without ever taking a peek inside?”

“I didn’t say I was never tempted.” His voice was dry. “Incredibly tempted. Especially on nights when I’d had perhaps a bit too much to drink. But I resisted, because I knew it was never mine to read. It was for you and your people alone.” He gave a half-smile. “And then there was the fact that you would reduce me to cinders if you ever returned to find me snooping in your book.”

She turned to the last completed page as he spoke, noting the date penned in the top right corner: _8th day of Solace, 9:36 Dragon._

“Just before I was brought here,” she murmured, half to herself and half to him. 

He nodded. “I last saw you writing in it the night before you disappeared.”

She carefully pushed the cover closed, savoring the book’s weight in her hands. “This is more than I hoped for. Thank you.”

“No need to thank me. It’s yours, after all. I just held onto it for you.” His eyes flicked between the book and her face. “Perhaps it will be the final key to recovering your memories. But even if it’s not, reading about your past in your own words will provide a better picture of your life than I ever could.”

He rose from the table and stepped toward her. “There’s more I should tell you about being a Warden, things you’ll need to know…later on. But for now I should return to the rest of my party.” His lips twisted. “Some of them are half-convinced I’ve lost my mind, that I’ve abandoned our mission to chase after a ghost.”

Her reply faded from her mind as he took another step forward. 

“Whatever happens next is up to you,” he murmured.

He was close enough to reach out and touch. Her eyes darted up to his face, and she heard his breathing catch as she unconsciously wet her lips. She found herself holding her breath, and thought about letting him close the distance and kiss her, wondering what it would feel like to relearn the pressure and movement of his mouth against hers. 

But she was very nearly a magister of the Imperium, and he was a Grey Warden, and they had only met several days before.

“Not yet,” she whispered, and took a tiny step backward.

The shadow crossed his face for the briefest of moments before he concealed it. He inclined his head, and reached for her hand instead.

“May I?” he asked.

She nodded.

He curled his fingers around hers, lifting her hand to his mouth. 

“Until I see you again.” His hair swung around his shoulders as he pressed his lips to her knuckles, his eyes meeting hers. “My lady.”

She watched him turn away, following the path to the garden’s edge. When he reached the gate he stopped, one hand resting on the latch as he looked over his shoulder.

His gaze lingered on her face for a long moment, as though trying to fix her in his memory. Then he was gone, the gate swinging closed behind him. 

The elf stood next to the table, unmoving, distant eyes locked on the gate. Moments slipped by and ran together, the sun reaching its peak in the sky and beginning its westward descent. 

Finally she stirred, grasping the chair and settling into it slowly. The book’s leather cover was warm under her hands, and her fingers hovered over it for a moment before she turned to the first page and began to read.

_23rd day of Kingsway, 9:31 Dragon…_


End file.
